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ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE. 


THE 


INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: 


ITS ORIGIN, 
AN ACCOUNT OF ITS PROGRESS 


DOWN TO THE DEATH OF 


LORD RAGLAN. 


BY 


ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE. 


VOLUME I. 


NEWS  ¥ ORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 


FRANKLIN SQUARE, 


1875. 


Ob OE ED 


x 


x 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. 


In this Edition many notes have been added. The spell- 
ing of the names of several English officers, and of one for- 
eigner, has been corrected. Nota word has been withdrawn 
from the text, and not a word has been added to it. 

Of the notes, there are some few which correct or quali- 
fy the words of the text. Fora book which chances to be 
a subject of controversy, this way of setting right all mis- 
takes is, I think, the fairest and best. Far from hiding the 
mended spot, it makes the newly-found truth more: con- 
spicuous than it would have been if it had been allowed to 
glide quietly into the text. For example: In one of the 
lists of wounded officers, I or my printers chanced to leave 
out the name of Colonel Smith. Upon the omission be- 
coming known to me, I attached to the passage a mark of 
reference, which seizes the eye of the reader and carries 
~ him to the foot of the page, where instantly he sees it stated 
that Colonel Smith was one of the wounded. In this way 
the omitted fact is presented to the reader more effectually 


than it would have been if the word ‘Smith’ had been 


blended with the text, standing there with thirteen other 
names. 

But also, by this method, I acknowledge and publicly 
record against myself every single inaccuracy, however 
minute and trivial, which had struck me as requiring cor- 
rection when last I went through the book. Whether I 
could have been so venturesome as to do thus, if the emen- 
dations required had been many and important, E will not 
undertake to say. As itis, I am enabled to take this meth- 


944 K53 


v1 ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. 


od of courting any criticism which Lge be founded upon 
my confessions of error. 

The plan, therefore, is a fair one; but it is also, I think, 
very needful to adopt it, and I will aay why. 

The book is anderpaiiy discussion ; and in order that 
the conflict it raises may be honestly waged, it seems right 
to take care that the subject of dispute shall not be a shift- 
ing thing—a thing shifting this way and that under stress 
of public scrutiny. 

Again, there is a charge now pending. Rightly or wrong- 
ly, the accusers say that in public journals—in journals’ 
still sold under honorable titles—the writers are now and ° 
then suffered to misstate the tenor of books; and it seems 
that the printed accounts which have been given of tliis 
work are put forward as some of the instances in which 
misdescription has occurred. I have not myself taken the 
pains which would warrant me in declaring a resemblance, 
or a want of resemblance, between the book and its like- 
nesses; but knowing that the charge has been brought, I 
see it to be right that all those who are called upon to 
judge the question should have before their eyes the very 
text of a book which is the subject of the alleged misde-’ 
scriptions—the very text with all its sins and wickedness- 
es, not having one single word added, nor one single word 
withdtd wh: 

But, besides his reasons far the course he is taking, a 
man may have his motive; and I acknowledge that, with 
me, a chief motive for déclining to alter the text is this — 
I wish to keep a check ‘upon those who might like to be 
able to say that I had materially altered the book. If any 
body shall try to say such a thing in defiance of the plan 
T have adopted, he will find himself painfully tethered ; for, 
the words of the text standing fast, he will be unable torange 
beyond the circle of those little matters—matters chiefly 
minute, and of detail—which are dealt with in a few cor- 
rective foot-notes. Hither he must say what is not true 
under circumstances which make his exposure a simple 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. Vil 


task, or else he will have to browse upon such scant herb- 
age as is afforded by notes of this sort:—‘No [not a 
‘squadron|; only one troop.’ ‘No [not sixty years old]; 
‘only sixty-four.’ ‘Here the words ‘ Laurence and” 
‘should be inserted.’ ‘Instead of “a wing,” read “the 
‘“whole.”’ ‘The first of the commentators who found him- 
self checked in this way was thrown into so angry a state, 
that when I stood observing his struggles, I was glad to 
think of the prudence which had led me to keep him tied up. 

IT said just now that some of the writings which purport- 
ed to give the tenor of these volumes had been put forward 
as instances of unfaithful description. I have not enabled 
myself to assist this inquiry by comparing the accounts of 
things contained in the book with the book itself; and it 
‘is not desirable for me to do so, because an author can 
hardly expect to be looked upon as a good judge of what 
is, or is not, an honest abridgment or statement of his 
words; but I may be allowed to adduce two curious in- 
stances of the errors into which men may be led by looking 
to the accounts which have been given of a book instead of 
to the book itself. 

On the 15th of February, a stranger, who had been pres- 
ent at the Battle of the Alma, addressed to me a letter from 
a distant foreign station, which began thus: ‘Sir,—It has 
‘not been yet my good fortune to see a copy of your re- 
‘cent . .. work, the “ Invasion of the Crimea,” but a critique 
‘upon it in the’ (here the writer of the letter gives the name 
of his newspaper) ‘ of the 27th of January last, purporting 
‘to give an outline of some parts of the narrative, contains 
‘an assertion, made with reference to a description of the 
‘Battle of the Alma—viz., that under the fire sustained by 
‘Lord Raglan’s Head-Quarter Staff, “not a man of it re- 
‘ ceived a scratch,’—which I take to be incorrect.’ 

The writer proceeds to state, with admirable clearness, 
the circumstances which enabled him to speak as an eye- 
witness of what went on with the Head-Quarter Staff, and 
then says:—‘I presume to detail these particulars, in 


Vill ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION, 


‘order to show, Sir, that having thus, like yourself, taken 
‘part in, and been an eye-witness of, the movements of the 
‘Staff on the memorable day referred to, I may venture to 
‘point out how far the statement as to the Staff having 
‘come out of it scathless seems to be inaccurate ;’ and the 
writer then proceeds to prove to me, with great clearness 
and perspicuity, that on the two spots of ground which he 
rightly and carefully describes, two officers of the Head- 
Quarter Staff'were. wounded. 

Supposing that his newspaper was guiding him faith- 
fully, well indeed might this critic remonstrate with me for 
the inaccuracy of which he had been led to suppose me 
guilty, because the Staff, so far from coming off scathless, 
had been more than decimated. ° When my correspondent 
at that foreign station shall see the book itself, he will- 
know that I disclose this fully, giving the names of the two 
wounded officers ; and, indeed, it would have been strange 
if I had omitted to do so, for Leslie and Weare, the two 
Staff officers wounded, were both of them struck down on 
the part of the field where I was, and one of them fell with- 
in a few paces of me. 

Thus, then, it appears that even a careful and accurate 
man wie has to put up with his newspaper’s account of a 
book, at a time when he remains debarred from access to 
the book itself, is so misled by this method of seeking for 
the real purport of a volume that he thinks it is his duty 
to address the author with a view to correct a gross error— 
a gross error not existing in the book itself, but appearing 
to do so in the mind of one who receives his account of it 
from a newspaper. 

On the 18th of March last, another letter was written, 
which I doubt not to be also an instance of the effect pro- 
duced upona mind of fair intelligence by accounts purport- 
ing to give the tenor of a book. When Captain Mends 
thought it his duty to address his letter to the newspaper 
about the buoy, he introduced the subject by writing, and 
suffering to be printed and published, the following words: 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. 1x 


‘As I have been referred to by many as to the truth of 
‘Mr. Kinglake’s statement in his “Invasion of the Cri- 
‘* mea,” “that the landing of our army at Old Fort was 
‘“ materially delayed by the willful displacement of a buoy 
‘by the French,” I feel called upon in justice,’ ete. Now 
Captain Mends not only made that statement, but suffered 
it to be printed in the newspaper with inverted commas, ex- 
actly as given above. Well, those words are not in the 
book. Not only is there no such passage in the book— 
not only is there no assertion that ‘ material delay was oc- 
‘casioned by the willful displacement of the buoy by the 
‘French’—but the book actually makes light of the delay, 
saying that there was ‘much less delay, and much less 
‘confusion, than might have been expected ;’ and, far from 
undertaking to assert that the displacement of the buoy 
was willful, it goes out of its way to suggest that one of: 
the hypotheses which would account for the displacement 
was ‘sheer mistake.’ I can not doubt that Captain Mends 
intended to quote accurately ; and I account for his mis: 
take by supposing that, instead of copying from the book 
itself he must have been induced to give what purported to 
be a quotation, by taking his words from one of those print- 
ed representations of the contents of the book which were 
current at the time when he wrote his letter to the news- 
paper. j 

I repeat that I have done nothing toward that collation 
of passages which is necessary for determining whether 
any given account of the tenor of the book is an account 
given in good faith; but it struck me that the above two 
instances of men who trusted to printed versions of the 
contents of the book, instead of to the book itself, might 
possibly help the inquiry, and could hardly fail to serve as 
wholesome examples. 

In the general controversy which the book has engen- 
dered I am not taking part,’ but having in my hands 


1 And I haye no present intention of doing so; but when I giye my 


A2 


x ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION, 


large means of proof and disproof, I ought, of course, to aid 
toward the attainment of right conclusions upon disputed 
matters of fact; and it is only with that view that Iam now 
going to speak—not of the nature and spirit, but—ofthe mere 
abundance of the scrutiny which the book has undergone. 

The book treated of such subjects, and of a time so little 
removed from the present, that there were great numbers 
of public men—ministers, diplomatists, and military and 
naval officers—who were not only likely to have strong 
motives for narrowly scrutinizing the accuracy of the nar- 
rative, but were able to speak upon some or one of the sub- 
jects it touches with the authority of partakers or eye-wit- 
nesses. ‘Thence, as was to be expected, there were ad- 
dressed to me a quantity of communications, some personal, 
and some by letter. In these communications, the speak- 
ers and writers pointed out what they deemed to be errors 
or omissions, In almost every instance they made their 
representations with great precision, and with a strikingly 
rigid adherence to the subject-matter.’ 

War besides the authoritative criticism of those numbers 
of men who had been actors in the scenes described, there 
was the criticism of the periodical press. This was applied 
to the book, both at home and abroad; and so diligently, 
that already the works of the commentators must be many 
times greater in bulk than the original book. Of the pub- 
lications which yielded these floods of comment, there were 


long-withheld Preface I shall say why I resolved to tell aloud ‘the transac- 
‘tions which brought onthe war.’ The Preface, I think, will be of the same 
purport as the one I was preparing when I determined that I would let the 
book appear without covering it by any prefatory statement, except what 
was needed for showing ‘ the sources of the narrative,’ 

_ 1 T include in this category of communications from individuals some few 
which also appeared in print; as, for instance, one about the age of Sir 
George Brown, and the way he carried his plumes—another about the ex- 
act rank with which Colonel Codrington went out—and one or two more of 
a less important kind; but I do so rightly, because these communications 
had reached me before the time when they got published. I also include in 
this category the communication from Colonel Norcott, because, though his 
letter appeared in a newspaper, it was a letter addressed to me. 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. xi 


some whose conductors trusted mainly to public sources 
for the information on which they rested, but there were 
other conductors of reviews and newspapers who placed 
themselves under the guidance of some public man—some 
minister, some soldier, some sailor—who had been what is 
called ‘an actor in the scene.’ The criticism resulting from 
this last method was of a composite sort, for it more or less 
covertly uttered the notions of some public man whose 
reputation was at stake, but expressed them in the name of 
the journal through whom he addressed the public. From 
causes to which I need not advert, the commentaries were 
delivered, not only with great animation and zeal, but with 
a persistency not often applied to the criticism of one mere 
book. Diligence of the most varied kinds was brought to 
bear; for since the book involved politics as well as his- 
tory, it fairly enough became the subject—not merely of 
reviews, but also—of what they call ‘articles ;’ and seeing 
that it touched things abroad, correspondents employed by 
the conductors of newspapers in foreign capitals were en- 
couraged or suffered to remit their daily toil of gathering 
‘news,’ and take part for a time with their colleagues at 
home in finding something to say about this book.* Fi- 
nally, it was made to appear, that if an officer would sub- 
mit to the condition of writing to a newspaper, and would 
begin his letter with a criticism upon the book of a kind 
approved by the managers, he might append to his com- 
ments a narrative of his own achievements, with. the cer- 
tainty that his own account of his own deeds would be 
read in one day by thousands and thousands of people. 

It may be imagined that the immense body, both of au- 
thoritative and anonymous criticism, thus brought to bear 
upon one book, could hardly fail to show that mistakes 
had crept in here and there; but if any reader shall take 
the pains to separate from the bulk of the notes every sen- 
tence which puts right an-error, he will be able to judge 
and say whether the corrections are many and important, 
or whether they are scanty and slight. 


xi ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Be that as it may, I must state that, with the exceptions 
which I shall presently enumerate, I owe all these correc- 
tions to the public men and officers who have done me the 
honor to communicate with me either personally or by 
letter. 

For reasons of larger scope than those which only apply - 
to the questioned worth of a book, the public, I imagine, 
has an interest in knowing what impression has been made 
upon these volumes by the exertions of the periodical 
press. Certainly my own reading of the criticisms brought 
to bear on the book has been not only very imperfect, but 
has been conducted without method; and although I have 
taken other means besides my own scanty reading for 
learning what statements of mine upon matters of fact 
have been disputed in respectable publications, I can not 
be sure, nor even indeed imagine, that I have dealt with 
every contradiction upon matters of fact which has been 
taken in print to my statements. All I can say is, that 
when last I went through these volumes I did not know- 
ingly pass by any error; and it must be remembered that 
there is this safeguard—namely, that every public writer 
whose challenge upon a matter of fact I may have failed 
to notice, will not only. be able to exclaim against me for 
my neglect of his strictures, but will even be likely to do 
so, because it is according to nature that any critic who 
may have taken pains to give to a book this kind of antag- 
onistic assistance should be loth to see his industry wasted. 

Now, then, to speak of the corrections upon matters of 
fact which I owe to the periodical press. In writing a 
book of this kind, one naturally glances at many things 
which are not in strictness the subject of the History. 
Thus, before I came to the time when their actions brought 
them strictly within the range of this narrative, I glanced 
at the antecedent career of several public men, and in re- 
ferring to those ‘tidings from the Danube,’ which I spoke 
of as stirring the public mind in England, I suffered my- 
self to linger awhile on the ground whencé the tidings had 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. xii 


come. Well, in the course of those retrospective glances, 
I treated Lord Stratford’s antecedent absence from Con- 
stantinople as lasting full double the number of months 
that it really did; I said that, in 1886, St. Arnaud entered 
for the third time into ‘the military profession,’ when I 
ought rather to have said that he entered for the third 
time ‘upon the career of an officer serving with troops;’ I 
spoke of Lieutenant Glyn and his seamen as coming up 
from the sea with some gunboats, whereas I ought to have 
said that the gunboats they used at Giurgevo were lying 
in the river beforehand; and finally, I spoke of General 
Airey as returning from Canada to England upon the 
death of his uncle, whereas I ought to have said that he 
came back some months before. These four mistakes were 
pointed out, the first three of them by respectable English 
journals, and the fourth by an American newspaper. So 
far as concerns my retrospective glances at things not 
falling within the strict limits of the History, these are, I 
think, all the corrections which I owe to the zeal of the 
press. 

Well, but what impression has public criticism made 
upon the rest of the book? What (properly) historical 
errors have owed their correction to the vigilance of the 
periodical press ? 

They are as follows:—‘Garan’ should be ‘Gagarin ;’ 
Captain ‘Schane’ should be Captain ‘ Schaw ;’ ‘ Luxmore’ 
should be ‘ Luxmoore ;’ ‘ Bisset’ should be ‘ Bissett ;’ ‘Wool- 
‘combe’ should be ‘ Wollocombe ;’ ‘ Montagu’ should be 
‘ Montague.” 


1The press also suggested four perfectly just corrections in regard to the 
following matters:—The rank with which Colonel Codrington went out ; 
the wrongly-spelled name of ‘ Stacey ;’ the omission of Colonel Smith fibin 
the list of wounded; the misspelling which gave ‘Wardlow’ instead of ‘ Ward- 
‘law ;’ and the error about Sir George Brown’s exact age, and the way he 
carried his plumes; but these corrections had been previously supplied to 
me by means of private communication, and it is for that reason that I do 
not place them in the above enumeration of the corrections which I owe to 
the periodical press. ; 


Xiv ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITLON.. 


For these corrections I am indebted to the conductors of) 
an eminent English newspaper.’ 

I will repeat that there may, and there must be, num- 
bers of printed challenges upon questions of fact with 
which I have not become acquainted; and there may be 
others which I have heard of and forgotten ; but the above, 
I believe, are the only corrections supplied ‘by the period- 
ical press which I have hitherto seen fit to adopt. 

What then did I do with all the rest of those charges of 
error in matter of fact which were brought against me by 
the press? Well, I looked through the book, and where I 
observed a statement which I knew at the time to have 
been denied, I did this: By a note at the foot of the page 
where a challenged assertion occurred, I supplied a suffic- 
ing portion of the proofs by which I support my state- 
ment. Of the soundness and cogency of the proofs thus 
produced, it will be for the publics to judge. They are all, 
or nearly all, documentary. 

But, besides the unnumbered strangers and friends who 
have addressed to me private communications on the con- 
tents of the book, and besides the whole host of those who 
speak to the public through the medium of the periodical 
press, there is one persistent scrutinizer who (so far as con- 
cerns all questions of dry fact) has hitherto proved more 
formidable than all. He alone has succeeded in proving 
that, here and there, there is a mistake—slight enough per- 
haps’ in itself, but-—occurring-4 in a place where, to point to 
it, is to fix upon the part of the narrative in which it ap- 
pears, a small, yet ugly blemish. For some years this cav- 
iler took an interest in the progress of the book, and it is 
believed that he still wishes well to it; but, in his deter- 
mination to insist upon strict accuracy without the least. 
regard for the flow of the narrative, he is steadfast and pit- 


?The misspelling of the name of ‘Garan’ for ‘ Gagarin’ was pointed out 
by the correspondent of the newspaper acting at Const: antinople. The other 
misspellings of names were indicated in one of the many rev iews of the book 
which appeared in the same journal. 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. ~ . Peay 


iless. What makes his scrutiny so formidable is, that 
without the least merit on his part—he has chanced to be- 
come possessed—nay, is every day becoming more and 
more possessed—of the knowledge, the constantly-accru- 
ing knowledge, which enables him to find fault with effect. 
This persistent, implacable critic is no other than the au- 
thor himself. ° 

Of the way in which I break in and find fault with the 
book wherever truth bids me do so, I can best speak by 
giving a single example. Guided by Sir Colin Campbell’s 
narrative of the operations of his brigade at the Alma, I 
narrated the advance of the 79th Highlanders against the 
flank of a Russian column then marching across its front, 
and—catching animation from that strangly kindling pow- 
er with which Lord Clyde used to speak of these seenes— 
I said that the 79th ‘sprang at the flank’ of the Russian 
column. I never knew of any body except myself who 
ever found fault with the accuracy of the sentence. But it 
happened that, long after the publication of the book, and 
for a purpose having nothing to do with the movement in 
question, Lord Clyde, one day, brought me a paper, writ- 
ten by an officer of the 79th, and containing more minute 
details of the advance of the regiment than had previously 
come to my knowledge. From these details I gathered 
that, although the 79th had advanced exactly in the direc- 
tion I described, and against the flank of the Russian bat- 
talions then marching across its front, it had advanced 
more deliberately than I had supposed. I no sooner read 
this than I felt that my expression, ‘sprang at the flank,’ 
indicated a greater swiftness of attack than was consistent 
with the bare truth, and therefore needed to be qualified. 
Lord Clyde did not agree with me; he thought the expres- 
sion sufficiently accurate, and deprecated the notion of my 
qualifying the words; but I was steadfast in my determi- 
nation to show what I myself judged to be the very truth, 
and therefore it is that, by a qualifying note, I willfully 
mar and deface the sentence to which I append it, This 


Xvi ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. 


is only one example of the rigor with which the book is 
treated by its author.: 

And here I may say that, in order to substantiate dis- 
puted statements, I have not been always obliged to re- 
open the stores of information on which I founded my as- 
sertions. In many, and I think in most instances, I was 
saved the need of going back to papers long out of my 
sight, by the firm love of justice which brought men who 
had observed that I was wrongly contradicted to come for- 
ward of their own accord and lay before me the private 
letters and journals of eye-witnesses in support of the state- 
ments I had made. - Of the written documents on which’I 
based the narrative, I can say that, for the most part, I 
have hitherto kept them i in reserve. 

Until after the publication of the book, I think I was as 
much inclined as the generality of men to be doubtful of 
the possibility of getting very close to historical truth ; and 
I knew, of course, that the occurrences of a battle-field are 
especially hard to seize; but I must acknowledge that the 
supply of fresh, confirming proof by which I now find my- 
self supported, has done something toward lessening any 
tendency I had toward this kind of historical scepticism. 
When the first edition of the book was published, I had 
never seen the private journal and letters of Colonel Hood, 
the officer who commanded the Grenadier Guards at the 
Alma, nor the clear and straightforward narrative of Sir 
Charles Russell, of the same regiment. I was without that 
letter of Colonel Percy of the same regiment, to which (as 
will be gathered from the notes) I attach great worth. I 
had never seen that journal of Colonel Annesley of the 
Fusileer Guards, which tells me the story so naturally and — 
so well, that to glance through the written words is more 
like listening than reading. I had never seen the rough, 
life-like letters of Colonel Yea, nor the short telling letter 
of Colonel Aldworth. Yet, when all this authentic testi- 
mony of eye-witnesses 1s laid before me, I find it confirm- 
ing what I had asserted in print some mOnEHS before. See- 


ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION: XVil 


‘ing this, I can not but think that—even in the battle-field 
—there is truth, after all, to be found. 

If I might be suffered to press this view for a moment 
more by giving a chosen instance of the way in which it 
applies to my own narrative, I would venture to speak of 
one only among those several pieces of testimony by which’ 
I now support my account of the operations of the Grena- 
dier Guards at the Alma. I support what I say of the bat- 
talion by giving extracts from the journal and private let- 
ters. of its honored chief, Colonel Hood. These extracts 
correspond so closely with the tenor of the narrative, that 
the reader would be likely to say—‘That journal and 
‘those letters were evidently the authority on which the au- 
‘thor based his account of the operations of the Grenadier 
‘Guards.’ Itis, however, a fact, that I never saw the jour- 
nal, nor the letters, and never knew any thing of their 
tenor, until after the publication of the first and second 
editions of this book. It was then that Mrs. Grosvenor 
Hood (the widow of him whose achievement on the banks 
of the Alma had won so large a share of my attention) re- 
solved to give me fresh means of substantiating the narra- 
tive, by placing in my hands the treasured words which 
were written to her from the banks of the Alma.’ 

Now, when it is seen that I make a series of statements 
—of statements planted thick with particulars—in regard 
to the operations of a given battalion at the Alma, and 
that, after the publication, there comes to light a private 
record written on the field of the battle by the officer who 
commanded the battalion—a record confirming almost sen- 


?This she did with the full approval of Lord Hood, the present head of 
the family. I may here say (though I think I have clearly explained it in 
the foot-note, vol. ii. p. 441) that the order with respect to which Colonel 
Hood wrote, ‘ Thank God I disobeyed !’ was not an order given by the Di- 
visional General H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge. Colonel Hood had been 
directed by General Bentinck to conform to any movements on his left, and 
it was only by being applied to the event which afterward happened—viz., 
the temporary retreat of the Fnsileer Guards—that General Bentinck’s order 
became in effect an order directing Colonel Hood to retreat. 


XVill ADVERTISEMENT TO FOURTH EDITION. 


tence by sentence the account I give in my narrative—it’ 
is plainly a sound deduction to say, that the coincidence 
between the two accounts must result from the accuracy of 
both. But I venture to think that an inference of wider 
scope than that may fairly be drawn; «for surely in the 
mind of any body who shall be seeking after truth with 
the aid of accustomed principles, the appearance of new 
and confirmatory proofs of this sort will not only establish 
the particular assertion to which he finds them appended, 
but will even tend to strengthen his trust in other parts of 
the book. 


Note.—The additional notes of the author in the second, third and fourth 
editions, will be found at the close of the volume, under the head of Norss 
to Fourts EpIrion. 


THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. 


BeErForE I had determined to write any account of the 
war, there were grounds from which many inferred that a 
task of this kind would be mine; and I may say that, from 
the hour of their landing on the enemy’s coast close down 
to the present time, men, acting under this conviction, have 
been giving me a good deal of their knowledge. 

In 1856 Lady Raglan placed in my hands the whole mass 
of the papers which Lord Raglan had with him at the time 
of his death. Having done this, she made it her request 
that I would cause to be published a letter which her hus- 
band addressed to her a few days before his death All 
else she left to me. ‘Time passed; and no history founded 
upon these papers was given to the world. Time still pass- 
ed away; and it chanced to me to hear that people who 
longed for the dispersion of what they believed to be false- 
hoods, were striving to impart to Lady Raglan the not un- 
natural impatience which all this delay had provoked. But; 
with a singleness of purpose and a strength of will which 
remind one of the great soldier who was her father’s broth- 
er, she answered that, the papers having once been placed 
under my control, she would not disturb me with expres: 
sions of impatience, nor suffer any one else to do so with 
her assent. I can not be too grateful to her for her gener- 
ous and resolute trustfulness. If these volumes are late, the 
whole blame rests with me. If they are reaching the light 
too soon, the fault is still mine. } 

Knowing Lord Raglan’s habits of business, knowing his 


' ? J need hardly say that this letter will appear in its proper place, though 
not in this volume, 


ex THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. 


tendency to connect all public transactions with the labors 
of the desk, and finding in no part of the correspondence 
the least semblance of any thing like a chasm, I am led to 
believe that, of almost every thing concerning the business 
of the war which was known to Lord Raglan himself, there 
lies in the papers before me a clear and faithful record. 

In this mass. of papers there are—not only all the mili- 
tary Reports which were from time to time addressed to the 
Commander of the English army by the generals and other 
officers serving under him (including their holograph nar- 
ratives of the part they had been taking in the battles), but 
also Lord Raglan’s official and private correspondence with 
sovereigns and their ambassadors; with ministers, generals, 
and admirals; with the French, with the Turks, with the 
Sardinians; with public men, and official functionaries of 
all sorts and conditions; with adventurers, with men pro- 
pounding wild schemes, with dear and faithful friends.' 
Circumstances had previously made me acquainted with a 
good deal of the more important information thus laid be- 
fore me; but there is a completeness 1n this body of authen- 
tic records which enables me to tread with more confidence 
than would have been right or possible if I had had a less 
perfect survey of the knowledge which belonged to head- 
quarters. And, so methodical was Lord Raglan, and so well 
was he served by Colonel Steele, his military secretary, that 
all this mass of authentic matter lies ranged in perfect or- 
der. The strategic plans of the much-contriving Emperor 
—still carrying the odor of the Havanas which aid the in- 
genuity of the Tuileries—are ranged with all due care, and 
can be got at in a few moments; but, not less carefully 
ranged, and equally easy to find, is the rival scheme of the 
enthusiastic nosologist who advised that the Russians should 


1 T have never looked at it since 1856, but it struck me then, that the let- 
ter which Mr. Sidney Herbert addressed to Lord Raglan in the winter of the 
first campaign was the very ideal of what, in such circumstances, might be 
written by an English statesman who dearly loved his friend, but who loved 
his country yet more. 


THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. xxi 


‘ be destroyed by the action of malaria, and the elaborate pro- 


posal of the English general who submitted a plan for tak- 
ing Sebastopol with bows and arrows. Here and there, the 
neatness of the arranging hand is in strange contrast with 
the fiery contents of the papers arranged; for, along with 
reports and returns, and things precise, the most hurried 
scrawl of the commander who writes to his chief under 
stress of deep emotion lies flat, and hushed, and docketed. 
It would seem as though no paper addressed to the English 
Head-Quarters was ever destroyed or mislaid. 

With respect to my right to make public any of the pa- 
pers intrusted to me, I have this—and this only—to say : 
circumstances have enabled me to know who ought to be 
consulted before any State Paper or private letter hitherto 
kept secret is sent abroad into the world; and, having this 
knowledge, I have done what I judge to be right. 

The papers intrusted to me by Lady Raglan contain a 
part only of the knowledge which—without any energy on 
my part—lI was destined to have cast upon me; for, when 
it became known that the papers of the English Head-Quar- 
ters were in my hands, and that I was really engaged in the 
task which rumor had prematurely assigned to me, informa- 
tion of the highest value was poured in upon me from many 
quarters. Nor was this all. Great as was the quantity of 
information thus actually imparted to me, I found that the 
information which lay at my command was yet more abun- 
dant; for 1 do not recollect that to any one man in this 
country I have ever expressed any wish for the information 
which he might be able to give me, without receiving at 
once what I believe to be a full and honest disclosure of all 
he could tell on the subject. This facility embarrassed me; 


1 In one of the Reviews for April, 1863, there appeared this :—‘ Indeed, we 
‘believe that access [to the unpublished portion of the political correspond- 
‘ence] was refused to him [Mr. Kinglake] by the Foreign Office.’ In the 
number of the same Review which was published in the following July, 
there appeared a Postscriptum or Note in reference to the above statement. 
After showing my ground of complaint in regard to another misstatement 
of fact which I had called upon the. editor of the Review to withdraw, the 
Postscriptum or Note says as follows:—‘ He [ Mr. Kinglake] also informs us, 


XXxil THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. 


for I never could find that there was any limit to my pow- 
er of getting at what was known in this country. I rarely 
asked a question without eliciting something which added, 
more or less, to my labor, and tended to cause delay. 

And now I have that to state which will not surprise my 
own countrymen, but which still, in the eyes of the for- 
eigner, will seem to be passing strange. For some years, 
our statesmen, our admirals, and our generals have known 
that the whole correspondence of the English Head-Quar- 
ters was in my hands, and very many of them haye from 
time to time conversed and corresponded with me on the 
business of the war. Yet I declare I do not remember that 
any one of these public men has ever said to me that there 
was any thing which, for the honor of our arms, or for the 
credit of the nation, it would be well to keep concealed. 
Every man has taken it for granted that what is best for 
the repute of England is the truth. 

I have received a most courteous, clear, and abundant 
answer to every inquiry which I have ventured to address 
to any French Commander; and indeed the willingness to 
communicate with me from that quarter was so strong, that 
an officer of great experience, and highly gifted with all the 
qualities which make an accomplished soldier, was dispatch- 
ed to this country with instructions to impart ample state- 
ments to me respecting some of the operations of the French 
army. I seize upon this occasion of acknowledging the 
advantage I derived from the admirably lucid statements 
which were furnished to me by this highly-instructed offi- 
cer; and I know that those friends of mine to whom I had 
the honor of presenting him will join with me in express- 
ing the gratification which we all derived from his society. 

I thought it right to apprise the authorities of the French 
War Department, that, if they desired it, the journals of 
‘that access to the unpublished political correspondence, relating to the 
‘causes of the war, was not refused to him by the Foreign Office (as we 
‘had been led to believe), inasmuch as he made no application to obtain it. 


‘ As Mr. Kinglake has expressed to us his desire that these two points should 
‘be explained, we readily comply with his request.’ 


THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. xxi 


their divisions, and any other unpublished papers in their 
War-Office which they might be pleased to show, would be 
looked over by a gifted friend of mine, now a member of 
the House of Commons, who had kindly offered to under- 
take this task forme. The French authorities did not avail 
themselves of my offer; but any obscurity which might 
otherwise have resulted from this concealment has been ef- 
fectually dispersed by the information I afterward obtained 
from Russian sources. | 

Of all the materials on which I found my account of the 
battle of the Alma, hardly any have been more valuable to 
me than the narratives of the three Divisional Generals who 
there held command under Prince Mentschikoff. The gift- 
ed young Russian officer who obtained for me these deeply 
interesting narratives, and who kindly translated them from 
their Russian originals, has not only conferred upon me an 
important favor, but has also done that which will uplift 
the repute of the far-famed Russian infantry, by helping to 
show to Hurope the true character of the conflict which it 
sustained on the banks of the Alma. 

My knowledge respecting the battles of Balaclava and 

Inkerman, and the subsequent fights before Sebastopol, is 
still incomplete, and I.shall welcome any information re- 
specting these conflicts which men may be pleased to in- 
trust to me. From the Russians especially, I hope that I 
may receive communications of this kind. Their defense 
of Sebastopol ranges high in the annals of warfare, and I 
imagine that the more the truth is known, the more it will 
redound to the honor of the Russian arms. 
_ I do not in general appeal for proof to my personal ob- 
servation, but I have departed from this abstinence in two 
or three instances where it seemed to me that I might pre- 
vent a waste of controversial energy by saying at once that 
the thing told had been seen or heard by myself. 

With regard to the portion of the work which is founded 
upon unpublished documents and private information, I had 
intended at one time—not to give the documents nor the 
names of my informants, nor the words they have written 


XXIV THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. 


or spoken, but—to indicate the nature of the statements on 
which I rely; as, for instance, to say in notes at the foot of 
a page, ‘The Raglan Papers,’ ‘ Letter from an officer en- 
‘gaged,’ ‘Oral statement made to me by one who was pres- 
‘ent,’ and the hke. But, upon reflection, I judged that I 
could not venture to do this. When a published authority 
is referred to, any want of correspondence between the as- 
sertion and the proof can be detected by a reader who takes 
the trouble to ascend to the originals; but I do not like to 
assert that a document or a personal narrative withheld (for 
the present) from this wholesome scrutiny is the designated, 
yet hidden foundation of a statement which I make freely, 
in my own way, and in my own language. So although, 
when I found my statements upon a Parliamentary Paper 
or a published book, I commonly give my authority, yet, so 
far as concerns that part of the work which is based upon 
unpublished writings or private information—and this ap- 
plies to an important part of the first, and to nearly the 
whole of the second volume—lI in general make no refer- 
ence to the grounds on which I rely. Hereafter it may be 
otherwise; but, for the present, this portion of the book 
must rest upon what, after all, is the chief basis of.our his- 
torical knowledge—must rest upon the statement of one 
who had good means of knowing the truth. In the mean 
while, I shall keep and leave ready the clew by which in 
some later time, and without farther aid from me, my state- 
ments may be traced to their sources. 

For a period of now several years my knowledge of what 
I undertake to narrate has been growmg more and more 
complete. Far from gathering assurance at the sight of the 
progress thus made, I am rather led to infer that approach- 
es which continued so long might continue perhaps still 
longer; and it is not without a kind of reluctance that I 
pass from the tranquil state of one who is absorbing the 
truth, to that of a‘man who at last stands up and declares 
it. But the time has now come. 

A. W. KINGLAKE. 
12 St. James’s Place, London, 1st January, 1863. ; 


CONTENTS. 


TRANSACTIONS WHICH BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 


CHAPTER I. 


The Crimea, 25; Ground for tracing the causes of the war, 27; Europe in 
1850, 27; Standing armies, 27; Personal government, 27; Comparison 
between this system and that of governing through a council, 28; Per- 
sonal government in Russia, 29; In Austria, 29; In Prussia, 30 ; Admin- 
istration of foreign affairs under the Sultan, 30; ’ Constitutional system of 
England in its bearing upon the conduct of foreign affairs, 30; And of 
France down to the 2nd of December, 1851, 31; Power of Russia, 31; 
Turkey, 32. 


CHAPTER II. 


The Usage which tends to protect the weak against the strong, 36; Instance 
of a wrong to which the Usage did not apply, 37; Instance in which the 
Usage was applicable and was disobeyed, 37 ; Instances in which the Usage 
was faithfully obeyed, 38; By Austria, 38; By Russia, 38; By England, 
39; The practical working of the Usage, 40; Aspect of Europe in refer- 
ence to the Turkish Empire, 42; Policy of Austria, 42; Of Prussia, 43; 
Of France, 43; Of England, 44; Of the lesser states of Europe, 45. 


CHAPTER III. 


Holy shrines, 46; Contest for the possession of the shrines, 48; Patronage 
of foreign Powers, 48; Comparison between the claims of Russia and of 
France, 48; Measures taken by the French President, 49; By the Russian 
Envoy, 50; Embarrassment of the Porte, 51; Mutual concessions, 51; The 
actual subject of dispute, 51; Increased violence of the French Govern- 
ment, 52; Afif Bey’s mission, 52; Deliverance of the key and the star, 53; 
Indignation of Russia, 54; Advance of Russian forces, 55. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Natural ambition of Russia, 55; Its irresolute nature, 58; The Emperor 
Nicholas, 59; His policy from 1829 to 1853, 64. . 


CHAPTER V. 


Troubles in Montenegro, 65; Count Leiningen’s mission, 65; The Czar’s 
plan of sending another mission to the Porte at the same time, 66; Plans 
of the Emperor Nicholas, 66. 


CHAPTER VI. 


Position of Austria in regard to Turkey at the beginning of 1853, 67; Of 
Prussia, 67; Of France, 68; Of England, 69; Seeming state of opinion 
there, 69 ; Sir Hamilton Seymour, 72; His Conversation with the Em- 
peror, 73; Reception of the Czar’s overtures by the English Government, 
76; ‘Result of Count Leiningen’s mission, 77; Its effect upon the plans of 
the Czar, 77; He abandons the mse of going to war, 78. 

* 


XXV1 CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VII. 


The pain of inaction, 78; The Czar’s new scheme of action, 79; His choice 
of an ambassador, 80; Prince Mentschikoff, 80; Mentschikoff at Constan- 
- tinople, 81; Panic in the Divan, 81; Colonel Rose, 82; The Czar seem- 
_ ingly tranquillized, 82; The French fleet suddenly ordered to Salamis, 83 ; 
The Emperor Nicholas, his concealments, 83 ; Mentschikoff’s demands, 84. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Foreign ‘influence,’ 86 ; Grounds for foreign interference in Turkey, 86; Ri- 
valry between Nicholas and Sic Stratford Canning, 88; Sir Stratford Can- 
ning, 88; Instructed to return to Constantinople, 91; His instructions, 92. 


CHAPTER IX. 


Lord Stratford’s return, 94; His plan of resistance to Mentschikoff’s de- 
mands, 95; Commencement of the struggle between Prince Mentschikoff 
and Lord Stratford, 96. 


CHAPTER X. 


State of the dispute respecting the Holy Places, 100; Lord Stratford’s meas- 
ures for settling it,102; He settles it, 104; Terms on which it was set- 
tled, 104. 


CHAPTER XI. 


Peaceful aspect of the negotiation, 105; Angry dispatches from St. Peters- 
burg, 105; Cause of the change, 105; Inferred tenor of the fresh dispatch- 
es, 106; Mentschikoff’s demand for a protectorate of the Greek Church in 
Turkey, 107; Effect of conceding it, 107; The negotiations which followed 
the demand, 108; Rage of the Czar on finding himself encountered by Lord 
Stratford, 110; Its effect upon the negotiation, 111; Mentschikoff’s diffi- 
culty, 111; He is baffled by Lord Stratford, 112; He presses his demand 
in a new form, 112; Counsels of Lord Stratford, 113; His communica- 
tions with Prince Mentschikoff, 118; His advice to the Turkish ministers, 
114; His audience of the Sultan, 116; The disclosure which he had re- 
served for the Sultan’s ear,117; Turkish answer to Mentschikoff’s de- 
mand, 117; Mentschikoff’s angry reply, 117; His private audience of the 
Sultan, 118; This causes a change of ministry at Constantinople, 118 ; 
But fails to shake the Sultan,118; Mentschikoff violently presses his de- 
mands, 119; The Great Council determine to resist, 119; Offers made by 
the Porte under the advice of Lord Stratford, 119; Mentschikoff replies 
by declaring his mission at an end, 120; The representatives of the four 
Powers assembled by Lord Stratford, 120; Policy involved in this step, 
120; Unanimity of the four representatives, 121; Their measures, 121 ; 
Russia’s ultimatum, 121; Its rejection and final threats of Prince Ments- 
chikoff, 122; His departure, 123; Effect of the mission upon the credit 
of Nicholas, 123; Position in which Lord Stratford’s skill had placed the 
Porte, 125; Engagements contracted by England, 126; Obligations con- 
tracted by the act of giving advice, 127; England in concert with France 
becomes engaged to defend the Sultan’s dominions, 127; The process by 
which England became bound, 128; Slowness of the English Parliament, 
128; Powers intrusted to Lord Stratford, 128. 


CHAPTER XII. 


Rage of the Czar, 129 ; The Danubian Principalities, 131; The Czar’s scheme 
for occupying them, 131; Efforts to effect an accommodation, 132; De- 
fective representation of France, Austria, and Prussia, at the Court of St. 


CONTENTS. see 


Petersburg, 132; The Czar’s reliance upon the acquiescence of England, 
134; Orders for the occupation of the Principalities, 137; The Pruth 
passed, 137; Russian manifesto, 137; Course taken by the Sultan, 138 ; 
Religious character of the threatened war, 138. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


Effect of the Czar’s threat upon European Powers, 138; Upon Austria, 139; 
Upon Prussia, 139 ; Effect produced by the actual invasion of the Princi- 
palities, 140; In Austria, 140; In France and England, 140; In Prussia, 
140; Attitude of Europe generally, 141; Concord of the four Powers, 141 ; 
Their means of repression, 141; Their joint measures, 141; Importance 
of maintaining close concert between the four Powers, 141. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


State of the French Republic in November, 1851, 142; Prince Louis Bona- 
parte, 143; His overtures to the gentlemen of France at the time when he 
was President, 153; He is rebuffed and falls into other hands, 153; Mo- 
tives which pressed him forward, 153; He declares for universal suffrage, 
154; His solemn declarations of loyalty to the Republic, 154; Morny, 
155; Fleury, 156; Fleury searches in Algeria and finds St. Arnaud, 157; 
St. Arnaud is suborned and made Minister of War,157; Maupas, 157; _ 
He is suborned and made Prefect. of Police, 158; Persigny, 158; Contriv- 
ance for paralyzing the National Guard, 159 ; The army and its indigna- 
tion at M. Baze’s proposal, 159; Selection of regiments and of officers for 
the army of Paris, 160; Magnan, 160; Meeting of twenty generals at Mag- 
nan’s house, 161; The army encouraged in its hatred of the people, 161; 
Assembly at the Elysée on Monday night, 161; Vieyra’s errand, 161; Be- 
fore midnight several of the confederates assemble in an inner room, 161 ; 
The President intrusts a packet to Colonel Beville, 162; Transaction at 
the State Printing-office, 162; Tenor of the Proclamations, 162; Letters 
dismissing Ministers not in the plot, 163; Hesitation of the plotters at the 
Elysée, 163; Fleury drags them on, 163; The order from the Minister of 
War is in the hands of Magnan, 163; Maupas’s arrangements for the in- 
tended arrests,163; Disposition of the troops, 164; The arrests of the 
principal generals and prominent statesmen, 164; Morny takes possession 
of the Home Office, 165; Newspapers seized and stopped, 165; Meeting 
of the Assembly, 165; It is dispersed by troops, 165; The President’s ride, 
165; Seclusion and gloom of Prince Louis, 166; Measures for sheltering 
him from alarming messengers, 166; Meeting of the Assembly in another 
building, 167; Its decrees, 167; Troops ascend the stairs, but hesitate to 
use force, 167; Written orders from Magnan to clear the hall, 167; The 
Assembly refuses to yield except to force, 167; ‘The whole Assembly taken 
prisoners by the troops, and marched to the Quai d’Orsay, 168; The As- 
sembly imprisoned in the d’Orsay barrack, 169; The Members of the As- 
sembly carried cff to different prisons in felons’ vans, 169; The quality of 
the men imprisoned, 169; The quality of the men who imprisoned them, 
169; Sitting of the Supreme Court, 169; The Judges driven from the 
bench, 170; Circumstances which rendered it imprudent to resort to in- 
surrection for the defense of the laws, 170; The Committee of Resistance, 
171; Attempted rising in the Faubourg St. Antoine, 172 ; The barricade 
of the Rue St. Marguerite, 172 ; Barricades in Central Paris, 173 ; State 
of Paris at two o’clock on Dee. 4,173; Attitude of the troops, 173 ; Hesi- 
tation of Magnan, 173; Its probable grounds, 174; Apparent terror of the 
plotters, 174 ; Stratagem of forming the ‘Consultative Commission,’ 174 ; 
Magnan at length resolves to act, 175; Point of contact between the ground 


XXVIil CONTENTS. 


occupied by the troops and that occupied by the insurgents, 176; State of 
the Boulevard at three o’clock, 176 ; ‘The massacre of the Boulevard, 177; - 
Slaughter in Central Paris, 182; Slaughter of prisoners, 183; Mode of 
dealing with some of the prisoners at the Prefecture, 183; Gradations by 
which slayers of vanquished men may be distinguished, 184; Slaughter 
ranging under all those categories caused by the confederates, 185; In- 
quiry as to the alleged shooting of prisoners who were in the hands of the 
civil power, 185 ; Uncertainty as to the number of people killed, 188; To- 
tal loss of the army in killed, 188; Effect of the massacre upon the people 
of Paris, 189; Effect of the massacre in removing one of Louis Bona- 
parte’s personal disqualifications, 190; The fate of the provinces, 190; Mo- 
tives for the ferocity of the measures taken, 191; Terror, and afterward a 
hope of gaining support from men afraid of anarchy, 191; General dread 
of the Socialists, 192; The brethren of the Elysée take advantage of this, 
192; They pretend to be engaged in a war against Socialism, 192; Sup- 
port thus obtained, 192; Commissaries sent into the provinces; 193 ; The 
Church, 193; France dismanned, 194; Twenty-six thousand five hundred 
men transported, 195; The Plebiscite, 196 ; Causes rendering free election 
impossible, 196; The election under martial law, 197; Violent measures 
taken for coercing the election, 197; Contrivance for coercing the election 
by the vote of the army, 198; France succumbs, 198; Prince Louis sole 
lawgiver of France,199; The laws he gave her, 199; Importance of the 
massacre on the Boulevard, 199; Inquiry into its cause, 199; The passion 
of terror, 200; State of Prince Louis Bonaparte during the period of dan- 
ger, 260; He gives all he has to the soldiers, 201 ; He even signed the de- 
cree of the 5th of December, 202; State of Jerome Bonaparte, 202; Nat- 
ural anxiety of Napoleon, son of Jerome, 203; Bodily state of Maupas, 203 ; 
Grounds for the anxiety of the plotters and of Magnan, etc., 203; Effect of 
anxious suspense upon French troops, 204; Surmised cause of the massacre, 
205; Gratiiude due to Fleury, 206; The use the Elysée made of France, 
206; The oath which the President had taken, 206; His added promise 
as a ‘man of honor,’ 206; The Te Deum, 207; The President becomes 

- Emperor of the French, 208; The inaction of great numbers of French- 
men, 208 ; Its cause, 208; The gentlemen of France resolve to stand aloof 
from the Government, 209; The constant peril in which the confederates 
were kept, 209; The foreign policy of France used to prop the new throne, 
209. 


CHAPTER XV. 


Immediate effect of the Coup d’Etat upon the tranquillity of Europe, 210; 
The policy which it necessitated, 210; The French Government coerces 
the Sultan into measures offensive to Russia, 210; And then seeks an alli- 
ance with England, 211; Personal feelings of the new Emperor, 211; The 
French Emperor’s scheme for superseding the concord of the four Powers, 
212; The nature of the understanding of Midsummer, 1853, between France 
and England,214; Announcement of it to Parliament, 218; Failure of 
Parliament to understand the real import of the disclosure, 218; The 
Queen’s Speech, August, 1853, 218; This marks where the roads to peace 
and war branch off, 218. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Count Nesselrode, 219; State of the Czar after learning that the fleets of 
France and England were ordered to the mouth of the Dardanelles, 220 ; 
His complaints to Europe, 220; Their refutation, 220; The Vienna Con- 
ference, 221; ‘The effect upon England of becoming entangled in a sepa- 


CONTENTS. a 


rate understanding with France, 221; The French Emperor’s ambiguous 
scheme of action, 221; His diplomacy seems pacific, 222 ; He engages En- 
gland in naval movements tending to provoke war, 222; The Bosphorus 
and the Dardanelles, 223; The Sultan’s ancient right to control them, 223 : 
Policy of Russia in regard to the Straits, 223; The rights of the Sultan 
and the five Powers under the Treaty of 1841, 224; How these rights 
were affected by the Czar’s seizure of the Principalities, 224; Powerful 
means of coercing the Czar, 224; Importance of refraining from a prema- 
ture use of the power, 224; Naval movements in which the French Em- 
peror engages England, 224; Proofs of this, 225; Means well fitted for 
enforcing a just peace so used as to provoke war, 226. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


Lord Stratford’s scheme of pacification, 226; The ‘Vienna Note,’ 227; 
Agreed to by the four Powers and accepted by Russia, 227; The French 
Emperor does nothing to thwart the success of the Note, 227; Lord Strat- 
ford had not been consulted, 228 ; The ‘Vienna Note’ in the hands of Lord 
Stratford, 229; The Turkish Government determines to reject it unless al- 
tered, 230; They are firm, 230; Language used by Nesselrode, 231; The 
Protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey still the thing in question, 
231; The Porte declares war, 231; Warlike spirit of the belligerents, 231 : 
Warlike ardor of the people in the Ottoman Empire, 231; Moderation of 
the Turkish Government, 232; Its effect on the mind of the Czar, 232; 
The Czar’s proclamation, 232. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Announcement by the Czar, 233 ; The negotiations are continued, 233 ; Move- 

ment at Constantinople, 234; The use made of this by the Turkish Minis- 
ters, 234; They succeed in alarming the French ambassador, 235; Com- 
posure of Lord Stratford, 235; His wise and guarded measures, 235; The 
French Emperor. His means of putting a pressure upon the English Cab- 
inet, 236; Violent urgency of the French Emperor for an advance of the 
fleets to Constantinople, 237; Needlessness of the measure, 237; Its tend- 
ency to bring on war, 237; The English Government yields to the French 
Emperor, 238; Fleet ordered up to Constantinople, 238; Want of firm- 
ness and decision evinced in the adoption of the measure, 238; Baron 
Brunnow’s remonstrance, 239; Effect of the measure at St. Petersburg, 
239 ; Count Nesselrode’s sorrow, 239; The Czar’s determination to retali- 
ate, 239; Error of the notions regarding the disaster at Sinope, 240; Os- 
tentatious pwhlicity of the Russian Operations in the Black Sea, 240; Tid- 
ings of an impending attack by the Russian Fleet, 240; Inaction of the 
Ambassadors and the Admirals, 241; The disaster of Sinope, 242. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


Chasm in the instructions to the Admirals of the Western Powers, 243; 
Tends to bring blame upon the Home Government, 244; Reception of the 
tidings of Sinope in France and England, 244; The anger of the English 
people diverted toward the Czar, 244; An unjust charge against him gains 
belief in England, 244; First decision of the English Cabinet in regard 
to Sinope, 245; Lord Palmerston resigns office, 245; Proposal of the 
French Emperor, 246; Danger of breaking down the old barriers between 
peace and war, 246; Ambiguous character of the proposal, 246; The 
French Emperor presses upon the English Cabinet, 247; Lord Aberdeen’s 
Cabinet yields, 247; Lord Palmerston withdraws his resignation, 248; 
Orders to execute the scheme and to announce it at St. Petersburg, 248. 


XXX ‘CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XX. 


Terms of settlement agreed to by the four Powers and forced upon the Turks, 
248; Grounds for expecting an amicable solution, 249; Friendly recep= 
tion by the Russian Government of the news of the first decision of the 
English Cabinet, 249; Announcement at St.Petersburg of the scheme 
finally adopted by the Western Powers, 250; The negotiations are ruined, 
250; Rupture of the diplomatic relations, 250; The Czar prepares to in- 
vade Turkey, and fleets enter the Euxine, 250. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


Military error of the Czar in occupying Wallachia, 253; Of this Omar Pasha 
takes skillful advantage, 253; His autumn and winter campaigns, 253; 
Embarrassment and distress of the Czar, 254; He resorts for aid to Pas- 
kievitch, 255; Paskievitch’s counsels, 255; Movement of troops in the 
Russian Empire, 256. 


CHAPTER XXII? 


Sir John Burgoyne and Colonel Ardent dispatched to the Levant, 256; 
Troops sent to Malta, 257; Tendency of this measure, 257; Ministers de- 
termine to propose but a small increase of the army, 257; Continuance 
of Lord Aberdeen’s imprudent language, 258. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


The French Emperor’s letter to the Czar, 259; Mission to St. Petersburg 
from the English Peace Party, 261. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

Temper of the English an obstacle to the maintenance of peace, 262; Their 
desire for war, 262; Causes of the apparent change in their feeling, 262 ; 
State of feeling in the spring of 18%3, 264; Effect of the Czar’s aggression 
upon the public mind, 264; Still, in foreign affairs, the nation looks for 
guidance to public men, 265; Lord Aberdeen, 265; Mr. Gladstone, 266; 
Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone remain in office, 267; Effect of this on . 
the efforts of those who wished to prevent war, 267; The ruin of their cause 
not for want of grounds to stand upon, 268; Nor for want of oratorical 
power, 269; Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, 269; Reasons why they were 
able to make no stand, 270. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

Meeting of Parliament, 272; The Queen’s Speech, 272; The policy which 
it indicated, 273; The separate understanding with France, 2738; Unswery- 
ing resolve of Austria and Prussia to rid the Principalities of Russian 
troops, 273; Proofs of this from transactiéns anterior to the Queen’s 
Speech, 274; From transactions subsequent thereto, 276; The interests of 
Austria and Prussia begin to divide them from the Western Powers, 280; 
Austria and Prussia never swerve from their resolve, 280. 


CHAPTER XXVI-« 

Spirit of warlike adventure in England, 281; Its bearing upon the policy of 
the Government, 281; England’s engagements with the French Emperor, 
282; Into this policy the bulk of the Cabinet drift, 283 ; The Minister who 
went his own way, 283; Lord Palmerston’s way of masking the tendency 
of the Government, 289; Debates upon the Address, 289; Parliament in 
the dark as to the real tendency of the Government, 289; Production of 
the papers, 290; Their effect, 290; Question on which the judgment of 
Parliament should have been rested, 291. 


CONTENTS. XXxi 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


Last step, which brought on the final rupture, 292; Austria’s proposition, 
292; Importance of avoiding haste, 293 ; Pressure of the French Empe- 
ror, 293 ; EKagerness of the people in England, 293 ; The Government loses 
its composure, 293 ; The summons dispatched by England, 294; Instruc- 
tions to the messenger, 294; And to Lord Westmorland, 294; Austria not 
required to take part in the summons, 294; The counter-proposals of Rus- 
sia reach Vienna, 295; They are rejected by the Conference of the Four 
Powers, 295; Austria and Prussia support the summons without taking 
part in the step, 295; The French summons, 295; France and England 
brought into a state of war with Russia, 295; Message from the French 
Emperor to the Chambers, 296 ; Message from the Queen to Parliament, 
296 ; Declaration of War, 296 ; Difficulty of framing it, 297 ; The Czar’s 
Declaration and War Manifesto, 297; His invasion of Turkey is com- 
menced, 298; Treaty between the Sultan and the Western Powers, 298 ; 
Treaty between France and England, 298. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Recapitulation, 299; Standing causes of the disturbance, 299; Effect of per- 
sonal government by the Czar, 299; By the Emperor of Austria, 299; By 
the King of Prussia, 300; By the French Emperor, 300; Share of Russia 
in bringing about the War, 301; Share of Turkey in causing it, 303 ; 
Share which Austria had, 304; In other respects Austria discharged her 
duty, 305 ; Share which Prussia had, 305; In other respects Prussia dis- 
charged her duty, 306; As did also the German Confederation, 307; Share 
which the French Government had in causing the war, 307; Share which 
England had, 309 ; The volitions which governed events, 313. 


INVASION OF THE CRIMEA 


: CHAPTER XXIX. 

The commanders of the French and English armies, 315; Marshal St. Ar- 
naud, 315; Lord Raglan, 322; Marshal St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan 
brought together at the Tuileries, 327 ; Conference at the Tuileries, 330; 
Lord Raglan’s departure for the East, B32 s The French and English 
troops on the shores of the Dardanelles, 332; Cordial intercourse between 
the two armies, 332; St. Arnaud’s scheme for obtaining the command of 
the Turkish army, 332; St. Arnaud in the presence of Lord Stratford and 
Lord Raglan, 334; His scheme defeated, 335 ; His scheme for obtaining 
the command of English troops, 335; This also defeated, 336; Attempts 
of this kind checked by the French Emperor, 336 ; St. Arnaud suddenly 
declines to move his army toward the seat of War, 336; Lord Raglan’s 
disapproval of the proposed delay, 337 ; St. Arnaud’s sudden determination 
to take up a defensive position in rear of the Balkan, 338; Lord Raglan’s 
determined resistance to this plan, 338; Lord Raglan refuses to place any 
part of his army behind the Balkan, 340 ; ; St. Arnaud gives way and con- 
sents to move his army to Varna, 341; The armies move accordingly, 341; 
Bosquet’s overland march, 341 ; The way in which St. Arnaud’s schemes 
escaped publicity, 341. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

Tidings which kindled in England a zeal for the invasion of the Crimea, 342; 
Siege of Silistria, 343; The battle of Giurgevo, 347; Effect of the cam- 
paign of the Danube on the military ascendency of Russia, 850; ‘The agony 
of the Czar, 350; Lord Raglan’s dislike of undisciplined combatants, 351 ; 
Importance to England of native auxiliaries, 351. 


XXxil CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


The events in the Danube removed the grounds of the war, 353; Helplessness 
of the French people, 353; Course taken by the French Emperor, 354 ; 
Desire of the English for an offensive war, 354; Sebastopol, 354 ; The 
longing of the English to attack it, 355; The Duke of Newcastle, 355 ; 
His zeal for the destruction of Sebastopol, 357; Commanding power of 
the people when of one mind, 358; Means of forming and declaring the 
opinion of the nation, 358; Effect of political writings in saving men from 
the trouble of thinking, 358; Want of proportion between the skill of the 
public writer and the judicial competence of his readers, 359; The task of 
ascertaining and declaring the opinion of the country falls into the hands 
of a company, 360; That opinion demands the destruction of Sebastopol, 
365 ; Qualms of some members of the Government, 365: The Government 
vields, 367; No good stand made in Parliament against the invasion, 368 ; 
Preparation of the instructions addressed to Lord Raglan, 368; Instruc- 
tions sent to the French commander, 370. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


The Allies at-Varna, 370; Their state of preparation in the middle of July, 
370; Their command of the sea, 371, Information obtained by the For- 
eign Office as to the defenses of the Crimea, 371; No information obtained 
in the Levant, 372; Lord Raglan conceives that he is without trustworthy 
information, 372. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


The instructions for the invasion reach the Allied camp, 372; The men who 
had to determine upon the effect to be given to the instructions, 373 ; Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud, 373; Admiral Hamelin, Omar Pasha, and Admiral Dun- 
das, 374; Lord Raglan, 8375; The instructions addressed to him by the 
Home Government, 375; Their extreme stringency, 378; Considerations 
tending to justify this stringency, 379 ; The power of deciding practically 
invested in Lord Raglan, 380; His deliberations, 380; He requests the 
opinion of Sir George Brown, 380; His determination, and the grounds on 
which it rested, 381; His decision governs the counsels of the Allies, 384 ; 
He announces it to the Home Government, 384; The Duke of Newcastle’s 
reply, 385 ; The Queen’s expression of feeling, 385. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Conference at the French Head-quarters, 385; Lord Raglan’s way of eluding 
objections, 386; Reconnaissance of the coast, 387; Sir Edmund Lyons, 
387; Rumored change in the plans of the Czar, 388; Second conference, 
389; The French urge the abandonment of the expedition, 389; Lord 
Raglan’s way of bending the French to the plans of the English Govern- 
ment, 389; Preparations, 390; Ineffectual attempts of the Allies to de- 
ecive the enemy, 390; Fire at Varna, 391; Cholera, 391 ;. Weakly con- 
dition of the English soldiery, 393. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

Arrangements first made for the starting of the expedition, 393 ; The em- 
barkations, 394; Failure of the French calculations as to their steam 
power, 395. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Excitement and impatience of St. Arnaud, 396; He is induced to set sail 
without the English, 396; The naval forces of the Allies, 396; Duty de- 
volying on the English fleet, 397; Arrangements in regard to the English 


CONTENTS. err 


convoy, 397; The forces and supplies now on board, 397; Troops and sup- 
plies left at "Varna, 398; Departure of the English armada and of the 
French steam vessels, 398. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

The Black Sea, 400; Marshal St. Arnaud at sea without the English, 400; 
His anxiety, 400; He sails back, 400; Lord Raglan’s reproof, 401; Its 
good effect, 401; Lord Raglan’s increasing ascendency, 401; The whole 
Allied Armada together at sea, 401; The fleets-again parted, 401; Step 
taken by French officers to stop the expedition, 401; Conference on board 
the ‘ Ville de Paris,’ 402; St. Arnaud disabled by illness, 402; Unsigned 
papers read to the Conference, 402; St. Arnaud leaves all to Lord Raglan, 
403; Conference adjourned to the ‘ Caradoc,’ 403; Lord Raglan’s way of 
dealing with the French remonstrants, 405; His now complete ascendant, 
405; The use he makes of his power, 405; The English fleet at the point 
of rendezvous, 405; Lord Raglan’s reconnaissance of the coast, 405; He 
chooses the landing- pla®, 406; The whole Armada converges on the coast 
of the Crimea, 407; St. Arnaud’s sudden recovery, 407; The progress 
made by Lord Raglan during the Marshal’s illness, 407. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


Our ignorance of the country and of the enemy’s strength, 408; Gives to the 
expedition the character of an adventure, 409; Occupation of Eupatoria, 
409; The whole Armada gathers toward the landing-place, 410. 


. CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The landing-place, 411; Step taken by the French in the night, 411; De- 
stroys the whole plan of the landing, 413; Sir Edmund Lyons, 413; His 
way of dealing with the emergency, 413; New landing-place found for the 
English at Kamishlu, 413; Position of the English flotilla adapted to the 
change, 414 ; The cause and nature of the change kept secret, 414; Posi- 
tion of the in-shore squadrons, 415; Of the main English fleet, 415; Plan 
of the landing, 415; General Airey, 415; The first day’s landing, 419; 
Zeal and energy of the sailors, 420; Wet night’s bivouac, 420; Continu- 
ance of the landing, 420; Its completion, 421; By the English, French, 
and Turks, 421. 


CHAPTER XL. 


Deputations from the Tartar villages to the English etal: -quarters, 422 ; 
Result of exploring expeditions, 423; The English army—its absolute 
freedom from crime, 423; Kindly intercourse between our soldiery and 
the villagers, 424; Outrages perpetrated by the Zouaves, 424; Airey’s 
quick perception of the need to get means of land transport, 425; His 
seizure of a convoy, 425; His continued exertions, and their result, 425 ; 
The Tartar drivers, 426. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

The forces now on shore, 426; The nature of the operations for the advance 
to Sebastopol, 427; Comparison between regular operations and the sys- 
tem of the ‘movable column,’ 427; The Allies to operate as a ‘movable 
‘column,’ 430; Perilous character of the march.from Old Fort, 431; The 
fate of the Allied armies dependent upon the firmness of the left, 432 ; The 
French take the right, 482; Their trustfulness and good sense, 433; The 
advance begun, 433; The order of march, 433; The march, 435; Sick- 
ness and failing strength of many of the soldiers, 436; The stream of the 
Bulganak, 437. 


XXXIV CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XLII. 
The affair of the Bulganak, 437. " 


CHAPTER XLIII. 
Apparently dangerous situation of the English army, 440; Lord Raglan 
causes it to bivouac in order of battle, 440. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 


J. Position on the Alma, 441. 

II. Mentschikoff’s plan for availing himself of the position, 448; His per- 
sonal position, 449 ; His plan of campaign, 449; His reliance on the nat- 
ural strength of the position, 449 ; The means he took for strengthening 
it, 450; Disposition of his troops, 450; Forces originally posted in the part 
of the position assailed by the French, 451; In the part of the position as- 
sailed by the English, 451; The numbers actually opposed to the French 
and English respectively, 454 ; Forces of the Allies, 454; The tasks under- 
taken by the French and the English respectively, 455. 

III. Conference between St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan, 456; The French plan, 
456; The part taken by Lord Raglan at the conference, 4565; French plan 
for the operations of the English army, 457; St. Arnaud’s demeanor, 458 ; 
Result of the conference, 458. 

IV. March of the Allies, 459; Causes delaying the march of the English 
army, 459. 

V. The last halt of the Allies before the battle, 461. 

VI. Meeting between St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan, 463. 

VII. Bosquet’s advance, 464; He divides his force, 464 ; Disposition of the 
main body of the French army, 464; Ofthe English army, 465; The lead- 
ing Divisions of the English army deploy into line, 466; The Light Divi- 
sion not on its right ground, 466; The march continued, 467. 

VIII. Spectacle presented to the Russians by the advance of the Allies, 467 ; 
Notion entertained by the Russian soldiers of the English army, 468; Sur- 
prise at the sight of the English array, 468; Fire from the shipping, 468 ; 
Movement made without orders by the Taroutine and the ‘ Militia’ battal- 
ions, 468. 

IX. Half past one o’clock. Cannonade against the English line, 469; Men 
of our leading Divisions ordered to lie down, 469 ; The Ist Division de- 
ployed into line, 469; Sir Richard England ordered to support the Guards, 
470; Fire undergone by our men whilst lying down, 471. 

X. Cannonade directed against Lord Raglan and his staff, 472. 

XI. The Allies could now measure their front with that of the enemy, 473 ; 
The bearing of this admeasurement upon the French plan, 473; The ground 
which each of the leading Divisions had to assail, 474; Village of Bourliouk 
set on fire by the enemy, 474; Effect of this in cramping the English line, 
475. 

XII. General Bosquet, 475 ; His plan of operations, 476 ; Advance of Aute- 
marre under Bosquet in person, 476; Advance of the detached force under 
Bouat, 477; Farther advance of Autemarre’s brigade, 477 ; Guns brought 
out against him from Ulukul Akles, 477; Bosquet establishes himself on 
the cliff, 478; Measures taken by Kiriakoff, 478; Horsemen on the cliff, 
479. 

XIII. The effect of Bosquet’s turning movement upon the mind of Prince 
Mentschikoff, 479 ; His measures for dealing with it and his flank march, 
480; Mentschikoff on the cliff, 480; Cannonade between his and Bos- 
quet’s artillery, 480; Bosquet maintains himself, 481; Mentschikoff coun, 
termarching, 481; Position of Bosquet on the cliff, 481. 


CONTENTS. - XXXIV 


XIV. St. Arnaud orders the advance of Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, 
482; ‘The order into which the Allies now fell, 482; Lord Raglan’s con- 
ception of the part he had to take, 482; Artillery contest between the Rus- 
sian and the French batteries, 483; Canrobert’s advance across the river, 
483 ; His troops are sheltered from fire by the steepness of the hill-side, 
484; Duty attaching upon the commander of the Ist French Division, 
484; General Canrobert, 484; Unable to get up*his artillery, he is unwil- 
ling to advance without it, 485; He posts his battalions on the higher steeps 
of the Telegraph Height, 485 ; ‘The bulk of Prince Napoleon’s Division still 
on the north bank of the river, 486 ; Fire sustained by French troops, 486 ; 
Discouragement, 486; St. Arnaud pushes forward his reserves, 486; IIl 
effect of this measure upon the French troops, 486; Their complaint that 
they were being ‘massacred,’ 487; Anxiety on account of Bosquet, 487; 
State of the battle at this time, 487. 

XV. Opportunities offered to Mentschikoff, 488; The battle at this time lan- 
guished, 488; Causes which had occasioned the failure of the French op- 
erations, 489. 

XVI. A desponding account of Bosquet’s condition is brought to Lord Rag- 
lan, 490; Lord Raglan resolves to precipitate the advance of the English 
army, 490; Grounds tending to cause or justify the resolve, 491; Order 
for the advance of the English infantry, 491. 

XVII. Evans detaches Adams with two battalions, and advances on the bridge, 
492; The conflict in which he became engaged, 493. 

XVIII. Advance of the Light Division, 495; The task before it, 495 ; Means 
for preparing a well-ordered assault open to the assailants, 497; The Divi- 
sion not covered by skirmishers, 497. 

XIX. The tenor of Sir G. Brown’s orders for the advance, 498 ; The advance 
through the vineyards, 498; And over the river, 499; The left bank lined 
with the enemy’s skirmishers, 500 ; Course taken by General Buller, 500 ; 
Nature of the duty attaching upon him, 500. 

XX. The 19th Regiment, 501; State of the five battalions along the left 
bank of the river, 501; Sir George Brown, 501; General Codrington, 504. 

XXI. Codrington resolves to storm the Great Redoubt, 506; His words to 
the men, 506; He gains the top of the bank, 506; Lacy Yea and his Fu- 
sileers, 507; The heaving of the crowd beneath the bank, 507; Effect of 
the converging tendency which had governed the troops, 508 ; Endeavors 
of the men to form line on the top of the bank, 508; The task before them, 
508; The Right Kazan column advances, 509; Is defeated and retreats, 
509; The Left Kazan column begins its fight, 510. 

XXIf. The storming of the Great Redoubt, 510; No supports yet coming up 
from the top of the river’s bank, 517. 

XXIII. The Duke of Cambridge, 517; Halt of the Ist Division before enter- 
ing the vineyards, 519; General Airey comes up, 519; His exposition of 
the order to advance in support, 520; The Ist Division resumes its ad- 
vance, 520; Again stopped for a time, 520; Step taken by Evans, 520; 
Want of free communication along a line passing through inclosures, 520; 
The Guards, 521; Suggestion that they should fall back in order to re- 
form, 523; Sir Colin Campbell, 523; His answer to the suggestion, 526 ; 
Advance of the Ist Division to the left bank of the river, 526; Time laps- 
ing, 527; No support brought by the two battalions which remained under 
Buller, 527; The cause of this, 527. 

XXIV. State of things in the Redoubt, 528 ; A battery on the higher slopes 
of the hill brought to bear on our men, 529; Our men lodge themselves 
outside the parapet, 529; The forces gathered against them, 530; Warlike 
indignation of the Russian infantry on the Kourgané Hill, 530; Movement 


XXXV1 . CONTENTS. 


of the Ouglitz column, 530; Advance of the Vladimir column, 531; As- 
pect of the column, 533; Confusing rumors amongst our soldiery, 533 ; 
Unauthentic orders and signals to the men, 5383; A bugler sounds the 
‘retire,’ 535; The troops have a double motive for remaining where they 
are, 535; Conference of officers at the parapet and their fate, 535; The 
‘retire’ again sounded, 536; Our soldiery retreat from the Redoubt, 536 ; 
Losses of the regiments which stormed the work, 537. 

XXV. Cause which paralyzed the Russians in the midst of their success, 
538; Apparition of horsemen on a knoll in the midst of the Russian po- 
sition, 541; ‘The road which Lord Raglan took when he had ordered the 
advance of his infantry, 542; Lord Raglan’s position on the knoll, 545; 
Lord Raglan desires to have a couple of guns brought up to the top of the 
knoll, 547; Meantime he watches the progress of the battle, 547; A French 
aid-de-camp on the knoll, 548; His mission, 548 ;. Lord Raglan’s way with 
him, 548. 

XXVI. Causes of the depression which had come upon the French, 549; 
Operations on the Telegraph Height, 549; Backwardness of the 3rd 
French Division, 550; Prince Napoleon, 550; The mishaps which befell 
him, 551; The materials from which the bulk of the French army is taken, 
551; Great difference between their choice regiments and the rest of their 
troops, 552; Each Division furnished with a Zouave or other choice regi- 
ment, 552; Prince Napoleon is abandoned by his Zouave regiment, 552; 
Also St.Arnaud, riding with this Division, and answerable for its place 
in the field, 553; D’Aurelle’s brigade thrusts itself forward in advance 
of Prince Napoleon, 553; But in an order which incapacitates it from 
any immediate combat, 553; Helplessness of the deep column formed by 
D’Aurelle’s brigade and Prince Napoleon’s Division, 554; Condition of 
Kiriakoff on the Telegraph Height, 554; The ‘column of the eight bat- 
‘talions,’ 554; Kiriakoff invested with the charge of this column, 556; He 
marches across the front of D’Aurelle’s brigade, 556; And then advances 
upon the right centre of Canrobert’s Division, 557; The head of Canro- 
bert’s Division falls back, 557; State of the battle at this time, 557. 

XXVII. The two guns brought to the top of the knoll, 5593 Their fire 
causes the enemy to withdraw his guns, 559; It drives the enemy’s re- 
serves from the field, 560; The Ouglitz column stopped in its advance, 
560; So also the Vladimir, 561. 

XXVIII. Progress hitherto made by Evans, 561; He hears the guns from 
the knoll and sees their effect, 561; He at once advances, 562; The ene- 
my does not farther resist this advance with his infantry, 563; Evans 
joined by Sir Richard England with thirty guns, 563; Sir Richard En- 
gland’s dispositions for bringing support to Evans, 568; Evans’s situation 
in the mean time, 564. 

XXIX. Protracted fight between the 7th Fusileers and the left Kazan col- 
umn, 564; Defeat of the column, 569; It is arranged that the defeated 
column is to be pressed by the Grenadier Guards, 570. 

XXX. State of the field in this part of the Russian position, 570; The Scots 
Fusileer Guards advance up the slope, 571; Disaster which befell its left 
companies, 571; Situation in which the remnant of the battalion stood, 
572; It falls back in disorder, 572; The Grenadier Guards ascend to the 
top of the bank, 572; Their march up the slope, 572; Codrington rallies 
some of the men of the Light Division, 573; Proposes to place them in 
the chasm left by the centre battalion of the Guards, 573; His proposal 
rejected by the Grenadier Guards, 573; Continued advance of the Ist Di- 
vision, 573; Some men of the 95th Regiment and a rallied company of 
the Scots Fusilear Guards advance on the left of the Grenadiers, 573; 


CONTENTS. XXXVil 


The Coldstream, 574 ; The temper of English soldiery, 574; Advance of 
the Highland Brigade, 575; The nature of the fight now about to take 
place on the Kourgane Hill, 577. 

XXXI. Prince Gortschakoff’s advance with a column of the Vladimir cor ps, 
-578; Colonel Hood’s manceuvre, 580; Its effect, 581; The Coldstream, 
581; The Grenadiers and the Coldstream engaged with six battalions in 
columns, 581. 

XXXII. The stress which a line puts upon the soldiery of a column, 582; 
And upon a general who has charge of columns, 582; Impressions as 
wrought upon the mind of Kvetzinski by the English array, 582; Kvet- 
zinski convinced that he must move, 584; The columns along the redoubt 
distressed by their fight with the Grenadiers and Coldstream, 584 ; Con- 
tinuance of the fight between the Grenadier Guards and the left Vladimir 
column, 585; Defeat of the left Vladimir column and of the left Kazan 
battalions, 587 ; Kvetzinski’s oblique movement of retreat, 588 ; The Duke 
-of Cambridge master of the Great Redoubt, 588 ; Kvetzinski wounded and 
disabled, 588. 

XXXIII. Sir Colin Campbell’s conception of the part he would take with his 
brigade, 589; The 42nd at his side, 589; Sir Colin Campbell] and the 
Highland Brigade, 589 ; Their engagement with several Russian columns, 
590; Defeat of the four Russian columns, 598; Stand made by the Oug- 
litz battalions, 599; The enemy’s neglect of other measures for covering 
the retreat, 599; Slaughter of the retreating masses by artillery, 600; 
Losses sustained by the enemy on the Kourgané Hill, 600; By the Guards 
and Highlanders, 600. 

XXXIV. The scarlet arch on the knoll, 602; Retreat of the last Russian 
battalions, 603 ; Final operations of the artillery, 603; Their losses, 603. 
XXXV. Lord Raglan crossing the Causeway, 604; Prince Mentschikoff rid- 
ing toward him, 604; The part which he had been taking in the battle, 
604; Prince Mentschikoff’s reappearanee in the English part of the field, 
605 ; His meeting with Gortschakoff, 606; He does not. effect any opera- 
tion for covering the retreat, 606 ; Is carried along with the retreating 

masses, 606. 

XXXVI. The array of the English army on the ground they had won, 607 ; 
Operations of the English cavalry, 607. 

XXXVII. Progress of a French artillery train along the plateau, 608; Offi- 
cers riding with the train descry the ‘column of the eight battalions,’ 608 ; 
The column is torn by artillery fire, 609 ; Kiriakoff moves it, 609; Its de- 
meanor, 611; It is not followed by the French, 611; The part this great 
column had taken in the battle, 611. 

XXXVIII. A flanking fire from the French artillery is poured upon the 
troops on Telegraph Height, 612; Condition of things in that part of the 
field, 612; The result of what Kiriakoff had hitherto observed in the En- 
glish part of the field, 612 ; He now sees that in that part of the field the 
English have won the battle, 613; He conforms to the movement of the 
troops retreating before the English, 613; His retreat not molested by 
French infantry, 614. 

XXXIX. Great conflux of French troops toward the Telegraph, 614; Tur- 
moil and supposed fight at the Telegraph, 615 ; Marshal St. Ar naud, 616. 

XL. Opportunity of cutting off some of the enemy's retreating masses, 617 ; 
Vain endeavors of Lord Raglan and of Airey to cause the requisite ad- 
vance of French troops, 617; The extent to which St. Arnaud’s mind was 
brought to bear on the battle, 617. 

XLI. Situation of Forey with Lourmel’s brigade, 618; The rest of the French 
army arrayed upon the plateau, 618. . 


XXXVili CONTENTS. 


XLII. The position taken up by Kiriakoff, 618; The effect produced upon 
the Allies by his soldierly attitude, 618; He moves forward some cavalry, 
619; Lord Raglan’s vexation, 619. 

XLIII. Question as to the way in which the retreat should be pressed, 619 ; 
Lord Raglan’s opinion, 620; His plan, 620; It is proposed to the French, 
620; They decline to move, 620; Question whether a sterner method with 
the French might have answered better, 620. 

XLIV. The close of the battle, 621 ;. The cheers which greet Lord Raglan, 
621; He rides back to Bourliouk and visits the wounded, 621; The Allies 
bivouac on the ground they have won, 622; Colonel Torrens’s force comes 
up in the evening, 622; Lord Raglan in his marquee, 622. 

XLV. Continuation of the Russian retreat, 622; It degenerates into a disor- 
derly flight, 622. 

XLVI. Losses of the French, 624; Of the English, 624; Of the Russians, 
624; The trophies of victory scanty, 625. 

XLVII. Question whether the attack upon the position of the Alma could 
have been avoided, 625 ; The course actually taken, 626. 

XLVIIL. Summary of the battle, 627. 

XLIX. Question how far the Allies were entitled to take glory, 628. 

L. Cause of any shortcomings on the part of the French army, 630. 

LI. Effect of the battle upon the prospects of the campaign, 632. 


Notes to Fourts EpIrTIon, 633. 


‘ APPENDIX. 5 


I. Papers showing the difference which led to the rupture of Prince Ments- 
chikoff’s negotiation, 667. 

II. The ‘ Vienna Note,’ with the proposed Turkish modifications, 669. 

III. Papers showing the concord existing between the four Powers when 
France and England were engaging in a separate course of action, 670. 

IV. Note to page 200, 678. 

V. Lord Clarendon’s Dispatch demanding the evacuation of the Principal- 
ities, 679. 

VI. Note respecting the torpor of the English Cabinet on the evening of the 
28th of June, 1854, 680. 

VII. Correspondence respecting the placing of the buoy by the French in 
the night between the 13th and 14th of September, 681. 

VIII. Note respecting the operations of the 7th Fusileers, 684. 

IX. Note respecting the operations of the Scots Fusileer Guards at the Bat-- 
tle of the Alma, 687. 

X. Note respecting the theory that it was Sir George Brown who caused 
the Grenadier Guards to enter the Great Redoubt at the Alma, 690. 

XI. Note respecting the statement in the text that ‘ the Duke of Cambridge, 
‘riding up with the Coldstream, stood Master of the Great Redoubt,’ 695. 

XII. Note respecting the order of time in which certain events occurred at 
the Battle of the Alma, 697. 

XIII. Note respecting the truth of the accounts which represent thata great 
and terrible fight took place near the Telegraph on the day of the Alma, — 
698. 

XIV. Note containing an extract from a letter addressed by Colonel Napier, 
the Historian of the Peninsular War, to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, 701. 

XV. Note respecting the following Plans of the Battle of the Alma, 702. 


CONTENTS. XXxix 


PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I. 


I. Military Position of the Czar, 252. 

II. The Landing-place of the Allies, 412. 

III. Disposition of the English Army on the morning of the 20th, 442. 
IV. The ‘** Pass ” beyond the Alma, 445. 

V. Projet pour la Bataille de Alma, 458. 

VI. Section of the Ground beneath the Great Redoubt, 503. 

VII. The Storming of the Great Redoubt, 513. 

VIII. Positions of St. Arnaud, ete., 555. 

IX. Advance of the ‘ Column of Eight Battalions’ against Canrobert, 558. 
X. Second Fight on the Kourgané Hill, 579. 

XI. Continuation of the Fight on the Kourgané Hill, 594. 

XII. The ‘‘ Column of Eight Battalions” and the French Artillery, 610. 
XIII. Battle of the Alma, First Plan, 

XIV. Battle of the Alma, Second Plan, f at end of Voulme. 


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INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 


CHAPTER I. 


In the middle of this century the peninsula which divides 
the Euxine from the Sea of Azoff was an almost for- 
gotten land, lying out of the chief paths of merchants 
and travelers, and far away from all the capital cities of Chris- 
tendom. Rarely any one went thither from Paris, or Vienna, 
or Berlin: to reach it from London was a harder task than to 
cross the Atlantic, and a man of office receiving in this distant 
province his orders dispatched from St. Petersburg was the 
servant of masters who governed him from a distance of a thou- 
sand miles. 

Along the course of the little rivers which seamed the 
ground, there were villages and narrow belts of tilled land, 
with gardens, and fruitful vineyards; but, for the most part, 
the Chersonese was a wilderness of steppe or of mountain range 
much clothed toward the west with tall stiff grasses, and the 
stems of a fragrant herb like southernwood.. The bulk of the 
people were of Tartar descent, but they were no longer in 
the days when nations trembled at the coming of the Golden 
Horde; and though they were of the Moslem faith, their re- 
ligion had lost its warlike fire. Blessed with a dispensation 
from military service, and far away from the accustomed bat- 
tle-fields of Europe and Asia, they lived in quiet, knowing little 
of war, except what tradition could faintly carry down from 
old times in low monotonous chants. In their husbandry they 
were more governed by the habits of their ancestors than by 
the nature of the land which had once fed the people of Athens, 
for they neglected tillage, and clung to pastoral life. Watch- 
ing flocks and herds, they used to remain on the knolls very, 
still for long hours together, and when they moved, they strode 
over the hills in their slow-flowing robes with something of 
the forlorn majesty of peasants descended from warriors. They 
wished for no change, and they excused their content in their, 

Vou. 1.—B 


The Crimea. 


26 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. I, 
simple way by saying that for three generations their race had 
lived happy under the Czars.! 

But afterward, and for reasons unknown to the shepherds, 
the chief Powers of the earth began to break in upon these 
peaceful scenes. France, England, and ‘Turkey were the in- 

vaders, and these at a later day were re-enforced by Sardinia. 
With the whole might which she could put forth in a province 
far removed from her military centre, Russia stood her ground. 
The strife lasted a year and a half, and for twelve months it 
raged. 

‘And with this invasion there came something more than 
what men saw upon the battle-fields of the contending armies. 
In one of the Allied States, the people, being free of speech and 
having power over the judgment of their rulers, were able to 
take upon themselves a great share of the business of the war. 
It was in vain that the whole breadth of Europe divided this 
people from the field of strife. By means unknown before, 
they gained fitful and vivid glimpses of the battle and the 
siege, of the sufferings of the camp and bivouac, and the last 
dismal scenes of the hospital tent; and being thus armed from 
day to day with fresh knowledge, and feeling conscious of a 
warlike strength exceeding by a thousand fold the strength 
expressed by the mere numbers of their ar my, they thronged 
in, and made their voice heard, and became partakers of the 
counsels of State. The scene of the conflict was mainly their 
choice. They enforced the invasion. They watched it hour 
by hour. Through good and evil days they sustained it, and 
when by the yielding of their adversary the strife was brought 
to an end, they seemed to pine for more fighting. Yet they 
had witnessed checkered scenes. They counted their army on 
the main land. They watched it over the sea. They saw it 
land. They followed its march. They saw it in action. They 
tasted of the joy of victory. Then came the time when they 
had to bear to see their army dying upon a bleak hill from cold 
and want. In their anguish this people strove to know their 
General. - They had seen him in the hour of battle, and their 
hearts had bounded with pride. They saw him now command- 
ing asmall force of wan, feeble, dying men, yet holding a strong 
enemy at bay, and comporting himself as though he were the | 
chief of a strong besieging army. They hardly knew at the 
time that for forty days the fate of two armies and the lasting 


' The villagers of Eskel (on the Katcha) declared this to me on the 23d 
of September, 1854, and the date gives value to the acknowledgment, for 
these villagers had been witnessing the confusion and seeming ruin of the 
Czar’s army. 


Cuar. I.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. aay, 


fame and relative strength of great nations were hanging upon 
the quality of one man’s mind. Tormented with grief and 
anger for the cruel sufferings of their countrymen, they turned 
upon the Chief with questioning looks, and seeing him always 
holding his ground and always composed, they strove to break 
in upon the mystery of his calm. But there, their power fell 
short. Except by withstanding the enemy, he made them no 
sign, and when he was re-enforced and clothed once more with 
power, he stillseemed the same to them. At length they saw 
him die. Thenceforth they had to look upon the void which 
was left by his death. They grew more patient. They did 
not become less resolute. What they hoped and what they 
feared in all these trials, what they thought, what they felt, 
what they saw, what they heard, nay, even what they were 
planning against the enemy, they uttered aloud in the face of 
the world; and thence it happened that one of the chief fea- 
tures of the struggle was the demeanor of a free and impetu- 
ous people in time of war. ; 

Again, the invasion of the Crimea so tried the strength, so 
measured the enduring power of the nations engaged, that, 
when the conflict was over, their relative stations in Europe 
were changed, and they had to be classed afresh. 

Moreover, the strife yielded lessons in war and policy which 
are now of great worth. 

But this war was deadly. It brought, they say, to the grave 
Ground for full a million of workmen and soldiers. It consumed 
acing tine 2 pitiless share of the wealth which man’s labor 
war. had stored up as the means of life. More than 
this, it shattered the frame-work of the European system, and 
made it hard for any nation to be thenceforth safe except by 
its sheer strength. It seems right that the causes of a havoc 
which went to such proportions should be traced and remem- 
bered. . 

For thirty-five years there had been peace between the great 
Powers of Europe. . The outbreaks of 1848 had 
been put down. The wars which they kindled had 
been kept within bounds, and had soon been brought to an 
end. Kings, emperors, and statesmen declared their love of 
- Standing ar- peace. But always while they spoke, they went on 
mies. levying men. Russia, Germany, and France were 
laden with standing armies. 

This was one root of danger. There was another. Between 
Personal gov. # Sovereign who governs for himself, and one who 
ernment. reigns through a council of statesmen, there are 


C i bd e > . . . 
between this points of difference which make it more likely that 


Europe in 1850. 


28 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. I, 


system and war will result from the will of the one man than 
peal gag from the blended judgments of several chosen ad- 
Council. visers. In these days the exigencies of an army are 
vast and devouring. Also, modern society growing more and 
more vulnerable by reason ‘of the very beauty and complexity 
of its arrangements is-made to tremble by the mere rumor of 
an appeal to arms; and upon the whole the evils inflicted by 
war are so cruel, and the benefit which a Power may hope to 
derive from a scheme of aggression is commonly so obscure, 
so remote, and so uncertain, that when the world is in a state 
of equilibrium and repose it is generally very hard to see how 
it can be really for the interest of any one State to go and do 
a wrong, clearly tending to provoke a rupture. Here then 
there is something like a security for the maintaining of peace. 
But this security rests upon the supposition that a State will 
faithfully pursue its own welfare, and therefore it ceases to hold 
good in a country where the government happens to be in such 
hands that the interests of the nation at large fail to coincide 
with the interests of its ruler. This history will not dissem- 
ble—it will broadly lay open—the truth that a people no less 
than a prince may be under the sway of a warlike passion, and 
may wring obedience to its fierce command from the gentlest 
ministers of state; but upon the whole, the interests, the pas- 
sions, and foibles which lead to war are more likely to ‘be found 
in one man than in the band of public servants which is called 
a ministry. A ministry indeed will share in any sentiments of 
just national anger, and it may even entertain a great scheme 
of state ambition, but it can sear cely be under the sway of fa- 
naticism, or vanity, or petulance, or bodily fear; for though 
any one ‘member of the Government may have some of these 
defects, the danger of them will always be neutralized in coun- 
cil. Then again, a man rightly called a ministér of state is not 
a mere favorite of his sovereign, but the actual transactor of 
public business.. He is in close intercourse with those labor- 
ers of high worth and ability who in all great States compose 
the permanent staff of the public office, and in this way, even 
though he be newly come to affairs, he is brought into acquaint- 
ance with the great traditions of the State, and comes to know 
and feel what the interests of his country are. Above all, a 
ministry really charged with affairs will be free from the per- 
sonal and family motives which deflect the state policy of a 
prince who is his own minister, and will refuse to merge the 
interests of their country in‘the mere hopes and fears of one 
man. 

On the other hand, a monarch governing for himself, and 


OdSSD/ 


Cuar.L] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 29 


without responsible ministers, must always be under a set of 
motives which are laid upon him by his personal station as 
well as by his care for the people. Such a prince is either a 
hereditary sovereign or he is a man who has won the crown 
with his own hand. In the first case, the contingency of his 
turning out to be a man really qualified for the actual govern- 
ance of an empire is almost, though not quite, excluded by the 
bare law of chances; and on the other hand it may be expect- 
ed that a prince who has made his own way to the throne will 
not be wanting in such qualities of mind as fit a man for busi- 
ness of state. In some respects, perhaps, he will be abler than 
acouncil. He will be more daring, more resolute, more secret ; 
but these are qualities conducive to war and not to peace. 
Moreover, a prince who has won for himself a sovereignty 
claimed by others will almost always be under the pressure of 
motives very foreign to the real interests of the State. He 
knows that by many he is regarded as a mere usurper, and that 
his home enemies are carefully seeking the moment when they 
may depose him, and throw him into prison, and ill-use him, 
and take his life. He commands great armies, and has a crowd 
of hired courtiers at his side; but he knows that if his skill and 
his fortune should both chance to fail him in the same hour, he 
would become a prisoner or a corpse. He hears from behind, 
the stealthy foot of the assassin; and before him he sees the 
dismal gates of a jail, and the slow, hateful forms of death by 
the hand of the law. Of course he must and he will use all 
the powers of the State as a defense against these dangers, and 
if it chance to seem likely—as in such circumstances it often 
does—that war may give him safety or respite, then to war he 
will surely go; and although he knows that this rough expe- 
dient is one which must be hurtful to the State, he will hardly 
be kept. back by such a thought, for, being, as it were, a drown- 
ing man who sees a plank within his reach, he is forced by the 
law of nature to clutch it; and his country is then drawn into 
war, not because her interests require it, nor even because her 
interests are mistaken by her ruler, but because she has-suffer- 
ed herself to fall into the hands of a prince whose road to wel- 
fare is distinct from her own. 

The power of All the Russias was centred in the Emperor, 
Personal gov. 2nd it chanced that the qualities of Nicholas were 
emmentin of such a kind as to enable him to give a literal truth 
Braye to the theory that he, and he alone, was the State. 

In Austria the disasters of 1848 had broken the custom of 
government, and placed a kind of dictatorship in 
the hands of the youthful Emperor. And, although 


In Austria, 


80 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. I 


before the summer of 1853 the traditions of the state had re- 
gained a great deal of their force, still for a time the recovery 
was not so plainly evident as to compel an unwilling man to 
see it; and the notion that the great empire of the Danube had 
merged in the mere wishes of Francis Joseph lingered always 
in the mind of the Czar and drew him on into danger. 

Even in Prussia, though the country seemed to enjoy a con- 
stitutional form of government, the policy of the 
State was always liable to be deranged by the trem- 
ulous hand of the King; and the anticipation of finding weak- 
ness in this quarter was one of the causes which led the Czar 
to defy the judgment of Europe. 

In the Ottoman dominions Abdul Medjid was accustomed 
Administra- to leave the administration of foreign affairs to re- 
tence r'82 sponsible ministers ; and it will be seen that this 
the Sultan. wholesome method of reigning gave the Turkish 
Government a great advantage over the diplomacy of other 
Continental States. 

In England there was no evil trace of that Oriental polity 
Constitutionar Which yields up the power of the state into the 
system of En- hands of one human being. Happy in the love of 
Patingunan the people who surrounded her throne, and free 
the conduct of from all motives clashing with the welfare of her 
Foreign Aft. yoalms, the Queen always intrusted the business of 
the monarchy to ministers of state enjoying the confidence of 
Parliament ; and upon the whole, the polity of the English 
state was such that no Government could draw the country 
into a needless war unless its error came to be shared by the 
bulk of the people. Indeed the power of the Crown in En- 
gland is so far from being a source of disturbance, that it is one 
of the safeguards of peace. There are circumstances in which 
an ancient reigning House gains a view of foreign affairs more 
tranquil and in some respects more commanding than any ob- 
tained by a Cabinet; and, although it is known that in these 
days ministerial responsibility can never be evaded by alleging 
the order of the Crown, the practice of the Constitution re- 
quires that the Foreign Secretary shall have the actual sane- 
tion of his Sovereign for every important step which he takes, 
and it requires also that, in order to the obtaining of this sanc- 
tion, the explanations tendered to the Crown by the ministry 
shall be complete and frank.! The duty of rendering these ex- 
planations, and of asking for the Royal sanction can scarcely 
be fulfilled without giving a minister the advantage of seeing 


In Prussia. 


1 The existing practice of the Constitution in this respect is laid down in 
the debates which began the Session of 1852. - 


Cuap. I.} BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 31 


a question from anew point of view. Therefore, although the 
responsible Secretary for Foreign Affairs can never find shel- 
ter by setting up the overr uling will of his Sovereign as the 
justification of his conduct, and although he must needs be 
supported by the advice or assent of Parli ament, still he is not — 
without means of guidance from sources of a less changeful 
kind; for whilst he has below him the tradition of the office, 
there is above him the tradition of the monarchy. By these 
means some steadfastness of purpose is generally, though not 
always, insured; and, except when it happens that the people 
are turned aside for a moment by some honest sentiment or 
moved by their innate desire to hear of instructions and bat- 
tles, the foreigner has good grounds for inferring that, what- 
ever the policy of England may be, it will not be altogether 
unstable. Certainly-the transactions of the East so drew Eng- 
land away from her landmarks as to bring her at last into war,. 
and this, too, ata time when the Queen was still blessed with 
the counsels of a husband, who was a wise and a gifted states- 
man; but it will be seen by-and-by how it came to happen 
that the forces of the Constitution were bafiled. 

France down to the winter of 1851 was under parliament- 
Andof France, ary government, and although, as will be seen, the 
down ta the ». President was able to take steps which tended to 
ber, 1851. generate troubles, the country was safe from the 
calamity of a wanton rupture with friendly States. The 
change wrought in the night of the 2nd of December, 1851, 
will be shown by-and-by, and its effects upon the peace of 
Europe will be traced, but the period now spoken of is the 
middle of the century, and at that time and so long as the Re- 
public maintained a real existence it was not possible in France, 
any more than in England, that a war should be undertaken 
by the Executive Government without the approval of Parlia- 
ment and of the nation at large. 

It was believed that the Emperor Nichotas numbered al- 
Power of Rus- Most a million of men under arms; and of these a 
sig, main part were brave, steady, obedient. soldiers. 
Gathering from time to time great bodies of troops upon his 
western frontier, he caused the minds of men in the neighbor- 
ing states to be weighed down with a sense of his strength. 
Mor eover, he was served by a diplomacy of the busy sort, al- 
Ways laboring to make the world hear of Russia and to ac- 
knowledge her might; and being united by family ties with 
some of the reigning Houses of Germany, he was able to have 
it believed that his favor might be of use to the courtiers and 
even sometimes to the statesmen of Central Europe. Down 


32 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. I, 


to the giving of trinkets and ribbons, he was not forgetful. 
His power was great; and when the troubles of 1848 broke 
out, the broad foundation of his authority was more than ever 
manifested ;. fcr, surrounded by sixty millions of subjects whose 
loyalty was. hardly short of worship, he seemed to stand free 
and aloof from the panic which was overturning the thrones 
of the Western Continent, and to look down upon the terrors 
of his fellow-sovereigns, not deignipg to yield his cold patron- 
age to the cause of law and order. In the West, he said, and 
even in Central Europe, the storm might rage as it liked, but 
he warned and commanded that the waves should not so much 
as cast their spray upon the frontiers of‘ Holy Russia ;?! and 
when Hungary rose, he ordered his columns to pass the bor- 
der, and forced the insurgent army to lay down its arms. 
Then, proudly abstaining from conditions and recompense, he 
yielded up the kingdom to his Ally. That day Russia seemed 
to touch the pinnacle of her greatness; for men were forced 
to acknowledge that her power was vast, and that it was 
wielded in a spirit of austere virtue, ranging high above com- 
mon ambition. 

But toward the South, Russia was the neighbor of Turkey. 
The descendants of the Ottoman invaders still re- 
mained quartered in Roumelia and the adjoining 
provinces. They were a race living apart from the Christians 
who mainly peopled the land ; for the original scheme of the 
‘Moslem invasions still kept its mark upon the country. When 
the Ottoman warriors were conquering a province, they used 
to follow the injunction of the Prophet, and call upon such of 
the nations as rejected the Koran, to choose between ‘ the trib- 
ute’ and the sword; but the destiny implied by the first branch 
of the alternative was very different from that of a people 
whose country is conquered by European invaders. Instead 
of being made subject to all the laws of their conquerors, the 
people of the Christian Churches were suffered to live apart, 
governing themselves in their own way, furnishing no recruits 
to the army, and having few legal relations with the State, ex- 
cept as payers of tribute. 

In cities, the people of the Christian Churches and of the 
Synagogue generaliy had their respective districts, apart from 
the Moslem quarter. They were not safe from lawless acts of 
tyranny; and there were usages which reminded them that 
they were a conquered people; but they were never interfered 
with, as the citizens of European States are, for the mere sake 


Turkey. 


1 See the Manifesto issued by the Czar in 1848. 


Cuar. 1] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 33 


of method or uniformity. They were free in the exercise of 
their religion; and most of the customs under which they lived 
were so completely their own, and so many of the laws which 
they obeyed were laws administered by themselves, that they 
might almost be said to form tributary republics in the midst 
of a military empire. Indeed this distinct existence was so 
fully recognized as a result of Mahometan conquest that the 
Turkish Government was accustomed to give the title of a 
‘Nation’ to the members of any Christian Church or Syna- 
gogue established within the Ottoman realm. 

The subjects, or Rayahs,’ as they are called, thus held un- 
der Mussulman sway numbered perhaps fifteen millions; and 
although the Mussulmans of the whole Empire might be com- 
puted at twenty-one millions, the great bulk of these were 
scattered over remote provinces in Asia and Africa. There 
were hardly more than two million Turks in Europe. These» 
dominant Ottomans were in an earlier stage of civilization 
than most of the Christian States; and it had happened that 
their Government in straining to overtake and imitate the 
more cultivated nations, had broken down much of the strength 
which belongs to a warlike and simple people. Besides, 
amongst the Turks who clustered around the seat of govern- 
ment, a large proportion were men so spoilt by their contact 
with the metropolis of the Lower Empire, that, whilst the 
State suffered from the ignorance and simplicity of the goy- 
erning race, it Was suffering also in an opposite way under the 
evils which are bred by corruption. 

Yet, notwithstanding the canker of Byzantian vice, and al- 
though they knew that they were liable to be baftled by the 
methods of high organization and ingenious contrivance now 
brought to bear upon the structure of armies, the Ottoman 
people still upheld the warlike spirit which belongs to their 
race and to their faith. It is true that Russia, seizing a moment 
when the Sultan was without an ally,! and almost without an 
army,” had invaded Bulgaria in 1828, and, passing the Balkan 
in the following year, had brought the campaign to an issue 
which seemed like a triumph. Yet men versed in the affairs 
of Eastern Europe always knew that the Treaty of Adrianople 
had not been won by the real strength of the invaders, but 
rather by a daring stratagem in the nature of a surprise, and 


‘1 The accustomed policy of England had been deranged by a sentiment 
in favor of Greece. Moreover, Lord Aberdeen was then at the Foreign 
Office. 

* The Sultan had destroved the Janissaries, and was beginning the forma- 
tion of an army upon the European plan. 
7 Be 


34 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. L 


by a skillful feat of diplomacy. Experience showed that the 
Turks could generally hold their ground with obstinacy, when 
the conditions of a fight were of such a kind that a man’s 
bravery could make up for the want of preparation and disci- 
pline. In truth they were a devoted soldiery, and fired with 
so high a spirit that when brought into the right frame of 
mind they could look upon the thought of death in action with 
a steadfast, lusty joy. They were temperate, enduring, and 
obedient to a degree unknown in other armies. They br ‘ought 
their wants within a very narrow compass, and, without much 
visible effort of commissariat skill or of tr ansport power, they 
were generally found to be provided with bread and cartridges 
and even with means of shelter. Their arms were always 
bright. Their faith tended to make them improvident, but a 
wise instinct taught them that if there was one thing which 
ought not to be left to fate or to the precepts of a deceased 
prophet, it was the Artillery. Their guns were well served. 
The Empire was wanting in the classes from which a large 
body of good officers and of able statesmen could be taken, 
and ‘therefore, with all their bravery, the Turks were liable to 
be brought to the verge of ruin by panic in the field, or by 
panic in the Divan; but where the men are of so warlike a 
quality as the Turks, the want of able officers can be remedied 
to an almost incredible degree by the presence of a foreigner, 
and indeed the Osmanlee is so strangely cheered and supported 
by the mere sight of an Englishman that aid rendered upon 
the spur of the moment by five or six of our countrymen has 
more than once changed despair into victory, and governed 
the course of events. Help of that sort, whatever our Govern: 
ment might do, was not again likely to be wanting to the Turks 
in a defensive war. Moreover, the vast and desolate tracts of 
country which lie between the Pruth and the Bosphorus can 
not easily be crossed by an army requiring large supplies, 
especially if it should be deprived of the sea communication. 
It is true that neither the warlike qualities of the Ottoman 
people nor the physical difficulties of the invasion were well 
understood in Europe, and it was commonly believed that 
Turkey, if left unsupported, would lie completely at the mercy 
of the Czar. This, however, was an error. Except in the pos- 
sible event of their being overwhelmed by some panic, the 
Turks were not liable to be speedily crushed by an army fore- 
ing the line of the Danube and ‘advancing through the passes 
of the Balkan. _ : 

But also, the conquest of European Turkey was obstructed 
by the very splendor of the prize. To have the dominion of 


G 


Cuar. I.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 35 


the summer kiosks, and the steep shady gardens looking down 
on the straits between Europe and Asia is to have a com- 
mand which carries with it nothing less than an Empire: and, 
since the strength of every nation is relative, and is liable to 
be turned to naught by the aggrandizement of another Power, 

it was plain that no one among the nations of Europe could be 
seen going in quest of dominion on the Bosphorus without 
awakening alarm and resistance on the part of the other great 
Powers. Cer tainly the Turks trusted much in Heaven; but 
being also highly skilled in so much of the diplomatic art as 
was needed for them in this temporal world, they knew how 
to keep alive the watchfulness of every Power which was re- 
solved to exclude its rivals from the shores of the Bosphorus. 
Moreover, those descendants of the Ottoman conquerors still 
remained gifted with the almost inscrutable qualities which 
enable a chosen race to hold dominion over a people more nu- 
merous and more clever than their masters. There were a few 
English statesmen and several English travelers who had come 
to understand this; but the generality of men in the Christian 


.countries found it hard to make out that a people could be wise 
without being keenly intelligent, and could see little strength 


in a civilization much earlier and more rude than their own. 
So in the common judgment of the world it had long seemed 

natural that, as a result of the decay which was thought to 

have come upon the Ottoman Empire, its European provinces 


should revert to Christendom. By many, the conquest of them 


was thought to be an easy task: for the Turks were few and 
simple, and in peace-time very listless and improvident; and 
the bulk of the people held under their sway in Europe were 


Christians, who bore hatred against their Ottoman masters. 
_And, to Russia these same provinces seemed to be of a worth 


beyond all kind of measurement, for they lay toward the warm 
South, and, commanding the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, 
gave access to and fro between the Euxine and the Mediter- 
ranean. The Power which seemed to be abounding in might 
was divided from the land of temptation by a mere stream of 
water. No treaty stood in the way.! Was there in the polity 
of Europe any principle, custom, or law which could shelter 


the weak from the strong, and forbid the lord of eight hundred 
thousand soldiers from crossing the Pruth or the Danube? 


' The preambles of the Treaties of 1840 and 1841 recognized the expedi- 
ency of maintaining the Sultan’s dominion, but there was nothing i in the ar- 
ticles of cither of those treaties which engaged the contracting parties to 


_defend the empire from foreign invasion. 


36 TRANSACTIONS WHICH : [Cuap. II. 


CHAPTER II. 


Tuer supreme Law or Usage which forms the safeguard of 
The Usage  Hurope is not ina state so perfect and symmetrical 
which tends to that the elucidation of it will bring any ease or com- 
Peale again fort to a mind accustomed to crave for well-defined 
the strong. rules of conduct. It is a rough and wild-grown 
system, and its observance can only be enforced by opinion, 
and by the belief that it truly coincides with the interests of 
every Power which is called upon to obey it; but practically, 
it has been made to achieve a fair portion of that security 
which sanguine men might hope to see resulting from the 
adoption of an international code. Perhaps under a system 
ideally formed for the safety of nations and for the peace of 
the world, a wrong done to one State would be instantly- 
treated as a wrong done to all. But im the actual state of the 
world there is no such bond between nations. It is true that 
the law of nations does not stint the right of executing justice, 
and that any Power may either remonstrate against a wrong 
done to another State great or small, or may endeavor, if so it 
chooses, to prevent or redress the wrong by force of arms; 
but the duties of States in this respect are very far from being 
coextensive with their rights. In Europe, all States except 
the five great Powers are exempt from the duty of watching 
over the general safety ; and even a State which is one of the 
five great Powers is not practically under an obligation to sus- 
tain the cause of justice unless its perception of the wrong is 
re-enforced by a sense of its own interests. Moreover, no 
State, unless it be combating for its very life, can be expected 
to engage in a war without a fair prospect of success. But 
when the three circumstances are present—when a wrong is 
being done against any State great or small, when that wrong 
in its present or ulterior consequences happens to be injurious 
to one of the five great Powers, and finally, when the great 
Power so injured is competent to wage war with fair hopes, 
then Europe is accustomed to expect that the great Power 
which is sustaining the hurt will be enlivened by the smart of 
the wound, and for its own sake, as well as for the public weal, 
will be ready to come forward in arms, or to labor for the for- 
mation of such leagues as may be needed for upholding the 


Cuar. II.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 34 


cause of justice. Ifa Power fails in this duty to itself and to 
Europe it suddenly becomes lowered in the opinion of man- 
kind, and happily there is no historic lesson more true than 
that which teaches all rulers that a moral degradation of this 
sort is speedily followed by disasters of such a kind as to be 
capable of being expressed in arithmetic, and of being in that 
way made clear to even the narrowest understanding. . The 
principle on which the safeguard rests will not be acknowl- 
edged by all, but those who will disown it can be designated 
beforehand. There are many who can not make out how 
society can justly be harsh upon a man for being tame under 
insult or injury; and the same class of moralists will encounter 
a like difficulty in their endeavor to understand the cogency ' 
and the worth of this Usage. 

Perhaps the limit to which the Usage is subject may be best 
Instance ofa shown by first giving an example of circumstances 
mong to wae in which it fails to take practical effect. When the 
not apply. Republic of Cracow was abolished by an arrange- 
ment concerted between Russia and Austria a clear wrong 
. was done, and France and England protested against it, but it 
could hardly be said that their interests were grievously af- 
fected by the change, and therefore it was not the opinion of 
Hurope that the Western Powers had been guilty of a great 
dereliction of duty because on this account they declined to go 
to war. 

But, as an example of circumstances in which tame acquies- 
Instance in cence would be clearly a breach of the great Usage 
i pe phe es and a defection from the cause of nations, one may 
plicableand Cite the conduct of Prussia in 1805; for, when the 
was disobeyed. Hirst Napoleon suddenly came to a rupture with 
Austria, and broke up from his camp at Boulogne and poured 
his armies into Germany, advancing upon Ulm and finally upon 
Vienna itself, all men saw that it was not only for the interest 
of Europe at large, but also for the interest of Prussia herself 
that she should come forward to prevent the catastrophe. She 
hung back and stood still whilst Austria succumbed ; but act- 
ing thus, Prussia incurred the ill opinion of Europe, and the 
ruin which follows degradation did not at all lag, for in the 
very next year Bonaparte was issuing his decrees from Berlin, 
and the Prussians were yielding up their provinces and their 
strong places to France, and handing over their stores of gold 
and silver, and of food and clothing, to cruel French intend- 
ants, and French soldiery were quartered upon them at their 
hearths. A brave and warlike people had been brought down 
into this abyss because their rulers had shrunk from taking up 


38 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. If, 


arms in obedience to the great Usage; and Europe set it down 
and remembered that Prussia’s dereliction of duty in 1805 was 
followed by shame and ruin in the autumn of 1806. 

But if the wars of 1805 and 1806 supplied a signal instance 
Instances in Of this kind of defection and of its speedy chastise- 


apich ae ment, they also furnished examples of loyal obedi- 
Isage was 

faithfully ence to the great Usage. From the rupture of the 
pbeyed. peace of Amiens to the summer of 1805, Bonaparte 


was at peace with the Continent and at war with this country. 
During that interval of more than two years he bent his whole 
energy, and devoted the vast resources at his command to the 
one object of invading and crushing England. It was against 
- the interest of Europe that England should be ruined, but more 
especially it was for the interest of Austria that this 
disaster should be averted, because the great em- 
pire of the Danube is so situate that its interests are more 
closely identical with the interests of England than with those 
of any other Power. Moreover the indignation of Austria 
was whetted by seeing Bonaparte crowning himself at Milan 
and seizing Genoa. Therefore when Pitt turned to the Court 
of Vienna, he did not turn in vain. Supported by Russia and 
Sweden, Austria came forward in arms, and though she was 
for the time broken down by the disaster of Ulm, and the de- 
feat of the Russian army at Austerlitz, her old ally was safe: 
nothing more was heard in those days of the invasion of En- 
gland; and the islanders relieved from the duty of mere literal 
self-defense were set free to enter upon a larger scheme of 
action.! Thenceforth they defended England by toiling for 
the deliverance of Europe. The coalition of 1805 was shat- 
tered, but before it perished it had helped to secure the pre- 
cious life-of the nation which was destined to be the first to 
carry war into the territory of the disturber. 

Again, in the same year it was perilous to central Europe that 
Bonaparte should be having dominion in Germany; 
but also it was against the interest of Russia that this 
should be, and the defection of Prussia threw upon the Czar 
the burden of having to be foremost in the defense of Austria. 
Therefore, in 1805, the Emperor Alexander came forward with 
his army to the rescue, and in the following year he refused to 
stand idle when Prussia was the victim, and again moved for- 


By Austria. 


sy Russia. 


' Of course it was the destruction of the French and Spanish fleets at 
Trafalgar, which prevented Bonaparte from resuming the idea of invading 
England, but that which caused him to abandon the enterprise which he had 
been planning for two years was the coalition. He broke up from the camp 
of Boulogne several weeks before the battle of Trafalgar. 


Cuar. II] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. gg 


ward his armies; and although he was worsted at Austerlitz 
in striving to defend Austria, and although after heroic strug- 
gles in defense of Prussia he at last was vanquished. at Fried- 
land and was obliged to make peace, still his faithful and val- 
orous efforts gained him so much of the respect of Europe and 
even of his victorious adversary, that, beaten as he was, he was 
able to go to Tilsit and to negotiate with the great Conqueror 
-of the day upon a footing which resembled equality. 

It has fallen to the lot of England also to have some share 
of the honor which Europe bestows upon resolute 
detenders of right, for when Bonaparte wished to 
make himself master of Spain and Portugal, it was the interest 
of England to prevent this result if she could, and to endeavor 
to thwart and humble the French Emperor in the midst of his 
triumphs; but it was also for the interest of Europe that En- 
gland should be able to do this. Nay, so crushing had been 
the disasters suffered by the Continental States that the glori- 
ous duty of standing foremost and alone in defense of the lib- 
erties of mankind was cast for a time upon England. The 
task might well seem a hard one, for all that the islanders could 
do was to send out in ships scanty bodies of troops, in order 
that the men, when they. landed, might encounter the armies 
of the hitherto victorious Emperor. But England did not 
shrink from the undertaking. For more than six years she 
carried on the struggle, and during some three years of that 
time she stood alone against Napoleon, for he had put down 
all the other nations which had sought to resist him, and dur- 
ing that evil time it seemed that the vanquished people of the 
Continent had no hope left except when they were telling one 
another in whispers that England remained mistress of the 
seas, and in the Peninsula was still fighting hard. Times grew 
better, and although Bonaparte still held the language of a 
great potentate, he had so mismanaged the resources of the 
heroic and warlike country which he ruled, that an English 
army with its Portuguese auxiliaries was able to invade and 
hold his territory, and whilst he still pretended to the Germans 
that he was a proud and powerful sovereign, Wellington un- 
masked the whole imposture of the “ French Empire” by es- 
tablishing his army and his foxhounds in the south of France, 
and quietly hunting the country in the livery of the Salisbury 
hunt.! The effort had begun when Sir Arthur Wellesley land- 


_1 Larpent’s ‘Private Journal’ at Head-Quarters, vol. ii., p.105. Welling- 
ton established himself in France in November, 1813. He sent back into the 
Peninsula his whole Spanish army, because it plundered. The invasion of 
France by the Continental Powers took place in the beginning of the follow. 
ing year. 


By England. 


40 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IT. 


ed upon the coast of Portugal in the year 1808, and it ended 


in 1814. In the spring of that last year, men of several nations 


were gathered together at the English head-quarters in Tou- 
louse; and it was put into the heart of a man whose name is 
unknown, but who spoke in the French tongue, to confer the 
loftiest title that ever was.tr uthfully given to man. In a mo- 
ment his words were seized as though they were words from 
on High, and the whole assembly with one voice saluted Wel- 
lington the “ Liberator of Europe.”! The loyal soldier shrank 
from the sound of a title not taken exact from the Gazette,? 
but the voice which had spoken was nothing less than the voice 
of grateful nations. If the fame of England had grown to this 
proportion, it was because she had faithfully obeyed the great 
Usage, and had come to be the main prop of the rights of oth- 
ers by firmly defending her own. 

The obligation imposed upon a great State by this Usage is 
The practical not a heavy yoke, for after all it does no more than 
working of the impel a Sovereign by fresh motives and by larger 
oe i sanctions to be watchful in the protection of ‘his 


- own interests. It quickens his sense of honor. It warns him 


that if he tamely stands witnessing a wrong which it is his in- 
terest and his duty to redress, he will not escape with the reck- 
oning which awaits him in his own dishonored country, but 
that he will also be held guilty of a great European defection, 
and that his delinquency will be punished by the reproach of 
nations, by their scorn and mistrust, and at last perhaps by their 
desertion of him in his hour of trial. But on the other hand, 
the Usage assures a Prince that if he will but be firm in com- 
ing forward to redress a public wrong which chances to be 
collaterally hurtful to his own State, his cause will be singu- 
larly ennobled and strengthened by the acknowledgment of the 
principle that, although he is fighting for his own people, he is 
fighting also for every nation in the world which is interested 
in putting down the wrong-doer. 

Of course, neither this nor any other human law or usage 
can have any real worth except in proportion to the respect 
and obedience with which it is regarded; but, since the Usage 
exacts nothing from any State except what is really for its own 
good as well as for the general weal, it is very much obeyed, 
and is always respected in Europe. Indeed, a virtual compli- 
ance with the Usage is much more general than it might seem 
to be at first sight, for the known or foreseen determination of 


1 Larpent’s ‘ Private Journal,’ vol. ii. p. 267. 
* Sir George Larpent (who was present) says that Wellington ‘‘ bowed con- 
fused,” and abruptly put an end to the scene. 


Cuar. IL] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 4] 


a great State to resist the perpetration of a wrong is constant: 
ly tending with great force to the maintenance of peace, and, 
peace being much less remarkable than war, the very success 
with which the principle works prevents it from being conspic- 
uous. And, certainly, when the Usage is faithfully obeyed, it 
is a strong safeguard, for, the interests of different States be- 
ing much intertwined, it commonly happens that a wrong done 
to a lesser State is in some way hurtful or dishonoring to one | 
or other of the great Powers, and if the great Power which is 
thus aggrieved takes fire, as it ought to do, and determines to 
resist or avenge, it is generally able to embroil ‘other States, 
and the result is that the Prince who'is the wrong-doer finds 
himself in a war which—having a tendency to become greater 
and greater—can hardly be otherwise than formidable to him. 
It is the apprehension of this result which is the main safe- 
guard of peace. Any prince who might be inclined to do a 
wrong to another State casts his eyes abroad to see the con- 
dition of the great Powers. If he observes that they are all in 
a sound state and headed by firm, able rulers who are equal, 
if need be, to the duty of taking up arms, he knows that his 
contemplated outrage would produce a war of which he can 
not foresee the scope or limit, and, unless he be a madman or a 
desperado desiring war for war’s sake, he will be inclined to 
hold back. On the other hand, if he sees that any great na- 
tion which ought to be foremost to resist him is in a state of 
exceptional weakness or under the governance of unworthy or 
incapable rulers, or is distracted by some whim or sentiment 
interfering with her accustomed policy, then perhaps he allows 
himself to entertain a hope that she may not have the spirit or 
the wisdom to perform her duty. That is the hope, and it may 
‘be said in these days it is the one only hope which would drive 
a sane prince to become the disturber of Europe. To frustrate 
this hope—in other words, to keep alive the dread of a just 
and avenging war—should be the care of every statesman who 
would faithfully labor to preserve the peace of Europe. It is 
a poor use of time to urge a king or an emperor to restrain his 
ambition and his covetousness, for these are passions eternal, 
always to be looked for, and always to be combated. For such 
a prince, the only good bridle is the fear of war. Of course it 
is right enough to appeal to this wholesome fear under the 
courteous title of “‘ deference to opinion,” though in truth it is 
not for the ambitious disturber, but rather for those Princes 
who are showing signs of weakness and failing spirit, that the 
discipline of opinion is really needed. Happily this discipline 
is not often wanting, for the feelings of nations in regard to the 


42 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. II. 


toleration of a wrong coincide with the general weal, and if 
men can not always shame a prince from being guilty of an 
ignominious defection, they at least take care that the fruit of 
his delinquency shall be bitter. Europe is severe and slow of 
forgiveness toward any great Power which by shrinking from 
the defense of its own rights has suffered a harm to be done to 
another State. 

It will be seen by-and-by that, in defiance of the opinion of 
Europe and without any color of right, a great Power invaded 
the territory of a weaker neighbor; but any one who keeps in 
mind the principle of the gr eat Usage will have the means of 
seeing what resources Europe had for repressing this act of 
violence, and will hold a elew for finding out the quarter to 
which men had a right to look for the commencement of re- 
sistance. 

The Power most exposed to harm from Russian encroach- 
Aspect of Fu. Ments upon European Turkey was Austria; for it 
ee. ~—Was plain, that if her great neighbor of the North 
Turkish Em- were to extend his empire in the direction of Mol- 
Policy of Aus. Gavia, Wallachia, and Servia, and so come wind- 
tria. ing round her Southeastern fr ontier, she would be 
brought into grievous danger; and her motives for watchful- 
ness in this quarter were quickened by a knowledge of the dis- 
turbing elements which existed in the border provinces, where 
the people were drawn toward Russia by the ties of religion 
and race, and even of language. If the prospect of the Ozar’s 

carrying his dominion to the shores of the Bosphorus was gall- 
ing and offensive to the other Powers of Europe, the evil which 
such a change was calculated to bring upon Austria seemed 
hardly short of ruin. Moreover Austria, in her character as a 
representative of German interests, was charged to see that the’ 
Lower Danube, ordained by Nature to be the main ontlet for 
the products of Central Europe, should not hopelessly fall un- 
der the control of the Northern Power. Thus’ upon Austria, 
before all other Powers, there attached the care of guarding 
against encroachments on the European provinees of the Sul- 
tan, and the cogency of this duty toward herself, toward Ger- 
many, and toward Europe, Austria has always acknowledged. 
When Turkey was invaded in 1828, Prince Metternich was the 
one statesman in Europe who strove to form a league for the 
defense of the Sultan, and it will be seen that, although the 
events of 1849 had tended to embarrass the free action of the 
Emperor Francis Joseph, the last war against the Sultan dis- 
closed no change in Austrian policy. 

Over the councils of Prussia at this time the Court of St. 


Cuay. II.] BROUGHT ON 'THE WAR. 43 


Petersburg had a dangerous ascendency; but by 
his actual station as a leading member of the Con- 
federation and by his hopes of attaining to a still higher au- 
thority in Germany, the King was forced into accord w vith Aus- 
tria upon all questions which touched the freedom of the Low- 
er Danube, and it was certain that he would do all that he 
safely could to discourage schemes for the disturbance of the 
German Empire. Still he lived in awe of the Emperor Nich- 
olas, and it was hard to say beforehand what course he would 
take if he should be called upon to choose between defection 
and war. 

Among the very foremost of the great Powers of Europe 
was France; and she was well entitled, if her rul- 
ers should so think fit, to use her strength against 
any potentate threatening to alter the great territorial arrange- 
ments of Europe; and especially it was her right to withstand 
any changes which she might regard as menacing to her pow- 
er in the Mediterranean. But French statesmen have gener- 
ally thought that, as the Mediterranean after all is only a part 
of the ocean, a new maritime power in the Levant might be 
rather a convenient ally against England, than a dangerous 
rival to France; and, upon the whole, it was difficult to make 
out, either from the nature of things or from the general course 

of her policy, that France had any deep interest in the integ- 
rity of the Sultan’s dominions. At all events, her interest was 
not of so cogent a sort as to oblige her to stand more forward 
than any of the other great Powers, or to bear in any greater 
proportion than they might do, the charge of keeping the Ot- 
toman Empire untouched. Indeed,it was hard at that time 
to infer from the past acts of France that she had any settled - 
- policy upon the Eastern Question. She had clung*with some 
steadiness to the idea of establishing French influence in Syria ; 
and from time to time during the last half century she had 
been inclined to entangle herself in Egypt; but upon the ques- 
tion whether the elements constituting the Ottoman Empire 
should be kept together, she had gener ally seemed to be unde- 
cided ; for, althouch she took part in the conservative arrange- 
ments of 1841, her conduct in the previous year, and at several 
other times of crisis, had disclosed no great reluctance on her 
part to see the empire dismembered. Upon the supposition, 
however, that she intended to pursue the policy which she aft- 
erward avowed, and to concur in the endeavor to maintain the 
Sultan’s dominions, her duty toward herself and to Europe re- 
quired that she should herself refrain from disturbing the quiet 
of the East; and that in the event of any wrongful aggression 


Of Prussia. 


Of France. 


t4 TRANSACTIONS WHICH | [Cuap. IT. 


by Russia upon the dominions of the Sultan, she should loyally 
range herself with such of the four great Powers as might be 
willing to check the encroachment by their authority, or, in 
last resort, by force of arms; but it was not at all incumbent 
upon France to place herself in the van; and it was not con- 
sistent with the welfare of her people that she should take upon 
herself a share of the European burden disproportionate to her 
interest in the state of Kastern Europe. Nor was there at this 
time any reason to imagine that the country could be brought 
into strife, or engaged in warlike enterprises without sufficient 
cause; for the institutions of France had not then shriveled 
up into a system which subordinated the vast interests of the 
State to the mere safety and welfare of its ruler. The legisla- 
tive power and the control of the supplies were in the hands 
of an Assembly freely elected; and both in the Chamber and 
in print, men enjoyed the right of free speech. Also the exee- 
utive power rested lawfully in the hands of ministers respon- 
sible to Parliament; and therefore, although the President, as 
will be seen, could do acts leading to mischief and danger, he 
could not bring France to a rupture with a foreign State un- 
less war were really demanded by the interests or by the hon- 
or, or at least by the passions of the country. And, the peo- 
ple being peacefully inclined, and the interests and the honor 
of the country being carefully respected by all foreign States, 
France was not at that time a source of disturbance to Europe. 

Next to Austria, England was of all the great Powers the 
one most accustomed to msist upon the mainte- 
nance of the Ottoman Empire. It might be a com- 
plex task to prove that the rule of the English in Hindostan is 
connected with the stability of the Sultan’s dominions in a far 
distant region of the world; but, whether the theory of this 
curious inter-dependence be sound or merely fanciful, it is cer- 
tain that the conquest of the shores of the Bosphorus and the 
Dardanelles by one of the great Continental Powers would 
straiten the range of England’s authority in the world; and, 
even if it did not do her harm of a positive kind, would rela- 
tively lessen her strength. The effect, too, of Russia’s becom- 
ing a Mediterranean Power could not be so clearly foreseen 
and computed as not to be a fitting subject of care to English 
statesmen. The people at large were not accustomed to turn 
their minds in this direction; but the “ Eastern Question,” as 
it was called, had become consecrated by its descent through a 
great lineage of Statesmen; and the traditions of the Foreign 
Oftice were re-enforced by English travelers: for these men, 
going to Eastern countries in early life, and becoming charm- 


Of England. 


Citar. II.] BROUGHT ON ‘THE WAR. fe ae 


ed with their glimpse of the grand, simple, violent world that 
they had read of in their Bibles, used soon to grow interested 
in the diplomatic strife always going on at Constantinople ; 
and then coming home they brought back with their chi- 
bouques and their cimeters a zeal for the cause of Turkey 
which did not fail to find utterance in Parliament. In process 
of time the accumulated counsels of these travelers, coming in 
aid of diplomatists and statesmen, put straight the deflection 
which had been caused by a romantic sympathy with the Greek 
insurgents, and it may be said that after the year 1833 the 
Eastern policy of England was brought back into its ancient 
channel. 

Abroad, no one doubted that the maintenance of the Sultan’s 
authority at Constantinople was of high concern to England ; 
and indeed the bearing of the Eastern question upon English 
interests seemed even more clear and obvious to foreigners . 
than to the bulk of our countrymen at home. At this time — 
Lord John Russell was the Prime Minister ; and the Secretary 
of State for Foreign Affairs was Lord Palmerston. It is true 
that during the last Russian invasion of Turkey in 1828 Lord 
Palmerston, then out of office, had taken part with Russia; but - 
from the period of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi in 1833 he 
had not swerved from the traditions of the Foreign Office; and 
upon the whole there was no fair ground for believing that 
under his counsels, and under the sanction of the then Prime 
Minister, Lord Aberdeen’s acquiescent policy of 1829 would 
again be followed by England. It is true that strange doce- 
trines were afloat; but after 1833 the Government had no: 
forgotten that England was one of the great Powers of Eu- 
rope, and had never confessed by any unpardonable inaction 
that this height and standing in the world gave their country 
mere rank and celebrity without corresponding duties. Upon 
the whole, there was not at this time any sound reason for 
doubting that England would pursue her accustomed policy 
with due resolution. Thus Europe was in repose; for in gen- 
eral, when the world believes that England will be firm, there 
is peace ; it is the hope of her proving weak or irresolute which 
tends to breed war. , 

_. Of the lesser States of Europe, there were some which, in 
Fit the event of a war, might lean toward Russia; and 
he lesser : : Sue's 
States of Eu- more which would lean against her; and the divided 
et opinion of the minor Courts of Germany might be 
‘reckoned upon by the Czar as tending to hamper the action of 
the leading States; but, upon the whole, the interests of the 
lesser Powers of Europe and the means of action at their com- 


46 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ' [Cuap. IIT? 


mand were not of such a kind as to exert much weight in re- 
tarding or accelerating Russian schemes of encroachment upon 
Turkey. . 

This was the quiet aspect of Europe in relation to the Eastern 
question when an ancient quarrel between the monks of the 
- Greek and Latin Churches in Palestine began to extend to lay- 
men and politicians, and even at last to endanger the peace 
of the world. 


CHAPTER III. 


‘Tue mystery of holy shrines lies deep in human nature. For, 
however the more spiritual minds may be able to 
rise and soar, the common man during his mortal 
career is tothered to the globe that is his appointed dwelling- 
place; and the more his affections are pure and holy, the more 
they seem to blend with the outward and visible world. Poets 
bringing the gifts of mind to bear upon human feelings have 
surrounded the image of love with myriads of their dazzling 
fancies, but it has been said that in every country, when a 
peasant speaks of his deep love, he always says the same thing. 
He always utters the dear name, and then only says that he 
“worships the ground she treads.” It seems that where she 
who holds the spell of his life once touched the earth—where 
the hills and the wooded glen and the pebbly banks of the 
stream have in them the enchanting quality that they were . 
seen by him and by her when they were together—there al- 
ways his memory will cling; and it is in vain that space inter- 
venes, for imagination transcendent and strong of flight can 
waft him from lands far away till he hghts upon the very path 
by the river’s bank which was blessed by her gracious step. 
Nay, distance will inflame his fancy; for if he be cut off from 
the sacred ground by the breadth of the ocean, or by vast end- 
less desolate tracts, he comes to know that deep in his bosom 
there lies a secret desire to journey and journey far, that he 
may touch with fond lips some mere ledge of rock where once 
he saw her foot resting. It seems that the impulse does not 
spring from any designed culture of sentiment, but from an 
honest earthly passion vouchsafed to the unlettered and the 
simple-hearted, and giving them strength to pass the mystic 
border which lies between love and worship. For men strong: 
ly moved by the Christian faith it was natural to yearn after 
the scenes of the Gospel narrative. In old times this feeling 


Holy shrines. 


Cuar. II1.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 417 


had strength to impel the chivalry of Europe to undertake the 
conquest of a barren and distant land; and although in later 
days the aggregate faith of the nations grew chill, and Chris- 
tendom no longer claimed with the sword, still there were al- 
ways many who were willing to brave toil and danger for the 
sake of attaining to the actual and visible Sion. These ven- 
turesome men came to be called Pelerins or Pilgrims. At first, 
as it would seem, they were impelled by deep feeling acting 
upon bold and resolute natures. Holding close to the faith 
that the Son of God being also in mystic sense the great God 
himself had for our sakes and for our salvation become a babe, 
growing up to be an anxious and suffering man, and submit- 
ting to be cruelly tortured and killed by the hands of his own 
creatures, they longed to touch and to kiss the spots which 
were believed to be the silent witnesses of his life upon earth, 
and of his cross and passion. And, since also these men were 
of the Churches which sanctioned the adoration of the Vir- 
gin, they were taught alike, by their conception of duty and by 
nature’s low whispering voice, to touch and to kiss the holy 
ground where Mary, pure and young, was ordained to become 
the link between God and the race of fallen man. And, be- 
cause the rocky land abounded in recesses and caves yielding 
shelter against sun and rain, it was possible for the Churches 
to declare, and very easy for trustful men to believe, that a 
hollow in a rock at Bethlehem was the Manger which held the 
infant Redeemer, and that a Grotto at Nazareth was the very 
home of the blessed Virgin. 

Priests fastened upon this sentiment, and although in its be- 
ginning their design was not sordid, they found themselves 
driven by the course of events to convert the alluring mystery 
of the Holy Places into a source of revenue. The Mahometan 
invaders had become by conquest the lords of the ground; but, 
since their own creed laid great stress upon the virtue of pil- 
grimage to holy shrines, they willingly entered into the feeling 
of the Christians who came to kneel in Palestine. Moreover, 
they respected the self-denial of monks, and it was found that 
even in turbulent times a convent in Palestine surrounded by 
4 good wall, and headed by a clever Superior, could generally 
hold its own. It was to establishments of this kind that the 
pilgrim looked for aid and hospitality, and in order to keep 
them up the priests imagined the plan of causing the votary 
to pay according to his means at every shrine which he em- 
braced. Upon the understanding that he fulfilled that condi- 
tion he was Jed to believe that he won for himself unspeakable 
privileges in the world to come, and thenceforth a pilgrimage 


48 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IIT, 


to the holy shrines ceased to be an expression of enthusiastic 
sentiment, and became a common act of devotion. 

But, since it happened that, because of the manner in which 
the toll was levied, every one of the Holy Places was a distinct 
source of revenue, the prerogative of the Turks as owners of 
the ground was necessarily brought into play, and it rested 
with them to determine which of the rival Churches should 
have the control and usufruct of every holy shrine. Here then 
Contest forthe WAS a subject of lasting strife. So long as the Ot- 
possession of toman Empire was in its full strength, the authori- 
the shrines. ties at Constantinople were governed in their de- 
cisions by the common appliances of intrigue, and most chiefly, 
no doubt, by gold; but when the power of the Sultans so 
waned as to make it needful for them to contract engagements 
with Christian sovereigns, the monks of one or other of the 
Churches found means to get their suit upheld by foreign inter- 
Ptvonage of Vention. In 1740, France obtained from the Sultan 
Foreign Pow- a grant which had the force of a treaty, and its Ar- 
wt ticles or “‘ Capitulations,” as they were sometimes 
called, purported to confirm and enlarge all the then existing 
privileges of the Latin Church in Palestine. But this success 
was not closely pursued, for in the course of the succeeding 
hundred years the Greeks keenly supported by Russia obtain- 
ed from the Turkish Government several firmans which grant- 
ed them advantages in derogation of the treaty with France ; 
and until the middle of this century France acquiesced. 

In the contest now about to be raised between France and 
3 Russia, it would be wrong to suppose that, so far 

omparison : ° e . 
between the 8 Concerned strength of motive and sincerity of 
ciaims of Rus: purpose, there was any approach to an equality be- 

' tween the contending Governments. In the Greek 
Church the right of pilgrimage is held to be of such deep im- 
port that if a family can command the means of journeying to 
Palestine even from the far distant provinces of Russia, they 
can scarcely remain in the sensation of being truly devout. 
without undertaking the holy enterprise; and to this end the 
fruits of parsimony and labor enduring through all the best 
years of manhood are joyfully devoted. The compassing of 
vast distances with the narrow means at the command of a 
peasant is not achieved without suffering so great as to de- 
stroy many lives. This danger does not deter the brave, pious 
people of the North. As the reward of their sacrifices; their 
priests, speaking boldly in the name of Heaven, promise them 
ineffable blessings. The advantages held out are not under- 
stood to be dependent upon the volition and motive of the pil- 


Cuapr. III.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 49 


grim, for they hold good, as baptism does, for children of ten- 
der years. Of course every man who thus came from afar to 
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the representative of 
many more who would do the like if they could. When the 
Emperor of Russia sought to gain or to keep for his Church 
the holy shrines of Palestine, he spoke on behalf of fifty mil- 
lions of brave, pious, devoted subjects, of whom thousands for 
the sake of the cause would joyfully risk their lives. From 
the serf in his hut even up to the great Czar himself, the faith 
professed was the faith really glowing in the heart, and vio- 
lently swaying the will. It was the part of wise statesmen to 
treat with much deference an honest and pious desire which 
was rooted thus deep in the bosom of the Russian people. 

On the other hand, the Latin Church seems not to have in- 

culcated pilgrimage so earnestly as its Eastern rival; and if 
it did, it obtained but slight compliance with its precept, for 
whilst the Greek pilgrim ships poured out upon the landing- 
place of Jaffa the multitudes of those who had survived the 
misery and the trials of the journey, the closest likeness of a 
pilgrim which the Latin Church could supply was often a 
mere French tourist, with a journal and a theory, and a plan 
of writing a book. It was true that the French Foreign Of- 
fice had from time to time followed up those claims to protect - 
the Latin Church in the East which had arisen in the times 
when the mistresses of the Most Christian kings were pious ; 
but it was understood that by the course of her studies in the 
eighteenth century France had obtained a tight control over 
her religious feelings. Whenever she put forward a claim in 
her character as ‘the eldest daughter of the Church,’ men 
treated her demand as political, and dealt with it accordingly ; 
but as to the religious pretension on which it was based, Eu- 
rope always met that with a smile. Yet it will presently be 
seen that a claim which tried the gravity of diplomatists might 
be used as a puissant engine of mischief. 
- There was repose in the empire of the Sultan, and even the 
Measurestaken YiVal Churches of Jerusalem were suffering each 
by the French other to rest, when the French President, in cold 
President. blood, and under no new motive for action, took up 
the forgotten cause of the Latin Church of Jerusalem, and 
began to apply it as a wedge for sundering the peace of the 
world. 

The French Ambassador at Constantinople was instructed 
to demand that the grants to the Latin Church which were 
contained in the treaty of 1740 should be strictly executed, 
and, since the firmans granted during the last century to the 

Vot. I—C 


50 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IIT: 


Greek Church were inconsistent with the capitulations of 1740, 
and had long been in actual operation, the effect of this demand 
on the part of the French President was to force the Sultan 
to disturb the existing state of repose, to annul the privileges 
which (with the acquiescence of France) the Greek Church 
had long been enjoying, to drive into frenzy the priesthood of 
the Greek Church, and to rouse to indignation the Sovereign 
of the great military empire of the North, with all those mil- 
lions of pious and devoted men who so far as regarded this 
question were heart and soul with their Czar. ‘The Ambas- 

‘sador of France,’ said our Foreign Secretary, ‘ was the first to 

‘disturb the status quo in which the matter rested. Not that 
‘the disputes of the Latin and Greek Churches were not very 
‘active, but that without some political action on the part of 
‘France those quarrels would never have troubled the relations 
‘of friendly Powers. If report is to be believed, the French 
‘ Ambassador was the first to speak of having recourse to force, 
‘and to threaten the intervention of a French fleet to enforce 
‘the demands of his country. We should deeply regret any 
‘dispute that might lead to conflict between two of the great 
‘Powers of Europe; but when we reflect that the quarrel is 
‘for exclusive privileges in a spot near which the heavenly 
‘host proclaimed peace on earth and good-will toward men— 
‘when we see rival Churches contending for mastery in the 
‘very place where Christ died for mankind—the thought of 
‘such a spectacle is melancholy indeed. .... . Both parties 
‘ought to refrain from putting armies and fleets in motion for 
‘the purpose of making the tomb of Christ a cause of quarrel 
‘among Christians.”! 

Still, in a narrow and technical point of view, the claim of 
France might be upheld, because it was based upon a treaty 
between France and the Porte which could not be legally ab- 
rogated without the consent of the French Government, and 
the concessions to the Greek Church, though obtained at the 
instance of Russia, had not been put into the form of treaty 
engagements, and could always be revoked at the pleasure of. 
the Sultan. Accordingly M. de Lavalette continued to press 
for the strict fulfillment of the treaty, and being guided, as it 
would seem, by violent instructions, and being also zealous and 
unskilled, he soon carried his ur gency to the extremity of using 
offensive threats, and began to speak of what should be done 
By the Russian by the French fleet. The Russian Envoy, better 
Envoy. versed in affairs, used wiser but hardly less cogent’ 


* “Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 67. 


Cuap. IL] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. . 5y 


words, requiring that the firmans should remain in force; and, 
since no ingenuity could reconcile the engagements of the 
treaty with the grants contained in the firmans, the Porte, 
Embarrass. though having no interest of its own in the ques- 
mentofthe tion, Was tortured and alarmed by the contending 
eres negotiators. It seemed almost impossible to satis- 
fy France without afironting the Emperor Nicholas. 

The French, however, did not persist in claiming up to the 
Mutual conces- Very letter of the treaty of 1740, and, on the other 
edna. hand, there were some of the powers of exclusion 
granted by the firmans which the Greeks could be persuaded 
to forego; and thus the subject remaining in dispute was nar- 
rowed down until it seemed almost too slender tor the appre: 
hension of laymen. 

Stated in bare terms, the question was whether, for the pur; 
Theactual DPOSse Of passing through the building into their 
subject of dis- Grotto, the Latin monks should have the key of the 
BS: Bhkefdodicofe the’ Church:of Bethlehem, and also 
one of the keys of each of the two doors of the sacred man- 
ger, and whether they should be at liberty to place in the 
sanctuary of the Nativity a silver star adorned with the arms 
of France. The Latins also claimed a privilege of worshiping 
once a year at the shrine of the Blessed Mary in the Church 
of Gethsemane, and they went on to assert their right to have 
‘a cupboard and a lamp in the tomb of the Virgin, > but in this 
last pretension they were not well supported by F rance,? and 
- virtually, it was their claim to have a key of the great door of 
the Church of Bethlehem instead of being put off with a key 
of the lesser door which long remained insoluble, and had to 
be decided by the advance of armies,? and the threatening 
movement of fleets. 

Diplomacy, somewhat startled at the nature of the question 
committed to its charge, but repressing the coarse emotion of 
surprise, ‘ventured,’ as it is said, *to inquire whether in this case 
‘a key meant an instrument for opening a door, only uot to be 

‘employed in closing that door against Glinstens of other 
‘sects, or whether it was simply a key—an emblem ;* but Di- 
plomacy answered, that the key was really a key—a key for 
opening a door, and its evil quality was—not that it kept the 
Greeks out, but that it let the Latins come in. 

After the change which was wrought in the institutions of 
France in the night between the Ist and the 2nd of Decem- 
ber, 1851, increased violence seems to have been imparted to 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 84. ? Thid., p. 48. 
° See-Count Nesselrode’s Dispatches, ibid., p. 61. ‘:Thid., p.'79 


52 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IIT: 


Increased vioe the instructions under which M. de Lavalette was 
sence of the acting, and his demand was so urgently pressed, that 
ernment. the Porte at length gave way, and acknowledged 
the validity of the Latin claims in a formal Note ;! but the pa- 
per had not been signed more than a few days, when the Rus- 
sian Minister, making hot remonstrance, caused the Porte to 
issue a firman,2 ratifying all the existing privileges of the 
Greeks, and virtually revoking the acknowledgment just given 
to the Latins. Thereupon, as was natural, the French Govern- 
ment became indignant, and to escape its anger the Porte 
promised to evade the public reading of the firman at Jerusa- 
lem ;3 but, the Russian Minister not relaxing his zeal, the Turk- 
ish Government secretly promised him that the Pasha of Jeru- 
salem should be instructed to try to avoid giving up the keys 
to the Latin monks. 

Then again, under further pressure by France, the Porte en- 
Afif Bey's Mis) gaged to evade this last evasion, and at length the 
pion. duty of affecting to carry out the conflicting en- 
gagements thus made by the Porte was intrusted to Afif | Bey. 
This calm Mahometan went to Jerusalem, and strove to tem- 
porize as well as he could betwixt the angry Churches. His 
great difficulty was to avert the rage which the Greeks would 
be likely to feel when they came to know that the firman was 
not to be read; and the nature of his little stratagem showed 
that, although he was a ere Moslem, he had some in- 
sight into the great ruling principle of ecclesiastical questions. 
His plan was to inflict a bitter disappointment upon the Latins 
in the presence of the Greek priesthood, for he imagined that 
in their delight at witnessing the mortification of their rivals, 
the Greeks might be made to overlook the great question of 
the public reading of the firman. So, as soon as the ceremoni- 
al visits had been. exchanged, Afif Bey, with a suite of the lo- 

cal Effendis, met the three Patriarchs , Greek, Latin, and Ar- 
menian, in ‘the Church of the Resurrection just in front of the 
Holy Sepulchre itself and under the great dome, and there he 
‘made an oration upon the desire of his Majesty the Sultan to 

‘ gratify all classes of his subjects,’ and when M. Basily and the 
Greek Patriarch and the Russian Archimandrite were becom- 
ing impatient for the public reading of the firman which was 
to give to their Church the whole of the Christian sanctuaries 
of Jer usalem, the Bey invited all the disputants to meet him 
in the Church of the Vir gin near Gethsemane. There he read 


Note of the 9th February, 1852 
2 The firman of the mi-fevrier, 1852. 
* Col. Rose to Lord Malmesbury. ‘ Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 46. 


Cuap. IIT.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 53 


an order of the Sultan for permitting the Latins to celebrate a 
mass once a year, but then to the great joy of the Greeks, and 
to the horror of their rivals, he went on to read words, com- 
manding that the altar and its ornaments should remain undis- 
turbed. ‘No sooner,’ says the official account, ‘were these 
‘ words uttered, than the Latins, who had come to receive their 
‘triumph over the Orientals, broke out into loud exclamations 
‘of the impossibility of celebrating mass upon a schismatic 
‘slab of marble with a covering of silk and gold, instead of 
‘plain linen, among schismatic vases, and before a crucifix 
‘which has the feet separated, instead of one nailed over the 
‘other’ Under cover of the storm thus raised, Afif Bey per- 
haps thought for a moment that he had secured his escape, 
and for a while he seems to have actually disentangled him- 
self from the Churches, and to have succeeded in gaining his 
quarters. 

But when the delight of witnessing the discomfiture of the 
Latins had in some deer ee subsided, the Greeks perceived that, 
after all, the main promise had been evaded. The firman had 
not been read. M. Basily, the Russian Consul-General, called 
on Afif Bey, and required that the reading of the firman should 
take place. At first the Bey affected not to know what firman 
was meant, but afterward he said he had no copy of it; and 
at length, being then at the end of his stratagems, he acknowl- 
edged that he had no instructions to read it. Thereupon M. 
Basily sent off Prince Garari to Jaffa to convey these tidings 
to Constantinople in any Arab vessel that could be found, and 
then hurrying to the Pasha of Jerusalem, he demanded to have 
a special council assembled, with himself and the Greek Patr? 
arch in attendance, in order that Russia and the Orthodox 
Church might know once for all whether the firman had been 
sent or not; but when the meeting was gathered, Hafiz Pasha 
only ‘made a smooth speech on the well-known benevolence 
‘of his Majesty toward all classes of his subjects, and that ‘was 
all that could be said.’! So the Greeks, thongh they had been 
soothed for a moment by the discomfiture of their Latin ad- 
versaries in the Church of the Virgin, could not any longer 
fail to see that their rivals were in the ascendant, and it soon 
turned out that the promise to evade the delivery of the keys 
was not to be faithfully kept. 

The pressure of France was applied with increasing force, 
Delivery of the and it produced its effect. In the month of Decem- 


key and the per, 1852, the silver star was brought with much 


? Consul Finn to Earl of Malmesbury, Oct. 27, 1852. |‘ Correspondence,’ 
part i., p. 44. 


54 ‘TRANSACTIONS WHICH’ (Cuap. IID 


pomp from the coast. Some of the Moslem Effendis went 
down to Jaffa to escort it, and others rode out a good way on 
the road that they might bring it into Jerusalem with triumph ; 
and on Wednesday, the 22nd of the same month, the Latin 
patriarch, with joy and with a great ceremony, replaced the 
glittering star in the sanctuary of Bethlehem, and at the same 
time the key of the great door of the church, together with 
the keys of the sacred manger, was handed over to the Latins.! 
For the Ozar and for the devout people of All the Russias 
Indignationof it was hard to bear this blow. ‘To the indignation,’ 
usu. Count. Nesselrode writes, ‘of the whole people fol- 
‘lowing the Greek ritual, the key of the Church of Bethlehem 
‘has been made over to the Latins, so as publicly to demon- 
‘strate their religious supremacy in the East. The mischief 
‘then is done, M.le Baron, and there is no longer any question 
‘of preventing it. It is now necessary to remedy it. ‘The im- 
‘munities of the Orthodox religion which have been injured, 
‘the promise which the Sultan had solemnly given to the Em- 
‘peror, and which has been violated, call for an act of repara- 
‘tion, It is to obtain this that we must labor. If we took for 
‘our example the imperious and violent proceedings which 
‘have brought France to this result, if like her we were indif- 
‘ferent to the dignity of the Porte, to the consequences which 
‘an heroic remedy may have on a constitution already so shat- 
‘tered as that of the Ottoman Empire, our course would be 
‘already marked out for us, and we should not have long to 
reflect upon it. Menace, and a resort to force would be our 
‘immediate means. The cannon has been called the last argn- 
‘ment of kings, the French Government has made it its first.. 
‘It is the argument with which at the outset it declared its 
‘intention to commence its proceedings at Tripoli as well as at. 
‘Constantinople. Notwithstanding our legitimate causes of, 
‘complaint, and at the risk of waiting some time longer for, 
“redress, we shall take a less summary course... .. It may 
‘happen that France, perceiving any hesitation on the part of. 
‘the Porte, may again have recourse to menace, and press upon: 
‘it so as to prevent it from listening to our just demands... .*. 
‘The Emperor has therefore considered it necessary to adopt 
‘in the outset some precautionary measures in order to support 
‘our negotiations, to neutralize the effect of M. Lavalette’s 
‘threats, : and to ouard himself in any contingency which may 
‘occur against a Government accustomed to act by surprises.’ 


**Consul Finn to Earl of Malmesbury, Dec. 28,1852; but see Mr. Pisani’s 
note, p. 106. 
* Count Nesselrode to Baron Brunnow, 14th January, 1853. _Ibid., p. 61.- 


Cuar. IV.] BROUGHT ON 'THE WAR, 55 


Nor were these empty words. The same authentic page! 
Advance of | Which tells of this triumph of Church over Church 
Russian forces. oes on to show how the Czar was preparing for 
vengeance. ‘ Orders,’ says Sir Hamilton Seymour, ‘have been 
‘dispatched to the 5th corps d’armée to advance to the fron- 
‘tiers of the Danubian provinces, without waiting tor their 
‘reserves, and the 4th corps, under the command of General 
‘Count Dannenberg, and now stationed in Volhynia, will be 
‘ordered to hold itself in readiness to march if necessary. 
‘General Luder’s corps ’armée, accordingly, being now 48,000 
‘strong, will receive a re-enforcement of 24,000 men soon after 

‘its arrival at its destination, and, supposing the 4th corps to 
‘ follow, the whole force will amount at least, according to offi- 
‘cial returns, to 144,000 men.’ 

Is it true that for this cause great armies were gathering, 

and that for the sake of the key and the silver star the peace 
of the nations was brought into danger? Had the world 
grown young once more ? 
_ The strife of the Churches was no fable, but after all, though 
near and distinct, it was only the lesser truth. A crowd of 
monks with bare foreheads stood quarreling for a key at the 
sunny gates of a church in Palestine, but beyond and above, 
towering high in the misty North, men saw the ambition of 
the Czars. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Men dwelling amidst the snows. of Russia are driven by 
Natural ambi. Very nature to grow covetous when they hear of 
tion of Russia. the happier lands where all the year round there 
are roses and long sunny days. And since this people have 
a sea-board and ports on the Euxine, they are forced by an 
everlasting policy to desire the command of the straits which 
lead through the heart. of an empire into the midst of that 
world of which men kindle thoughts when they speak of the 
Atgean and of Greece, and the Ionian shores, and of Palestine 
and Egypt, and of Italy, and of France, and of Spain and the 
land of the Moors, and of the Atlantic beyond, and the path 
of ships on the Ocean. Gifted with the knowledge and the 
skill which are means of excellence in the diplomatic art, and 
excluded by their institutions from taking any but an oftigial 
part in | the home Government, the Russian nobles had long 


1 ¢Bastern Papers,’ part i., p. 56. 


56 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. LV. 


been accustomed to bend their minds to foreign policy, and 
the State, favoring this inclination, used to multiply the labors 
‘of its diplomatic service. Almost every gifted and accom- 
plished Russian who might be traveling in foreign countries 
used to receive instructions of some kind from his Govern- 
ment, and was enabled to believe that, either by collecting in- 
formation or in some still more important way, he was per- 
forming a duty toward the State. Men thus intrusted became 
eager partakers of a policy rather more enterprising than the 
policy avowed by their Government, and the result was that 
the natural ambition of the country was always being nurtured 
and subserved by a great Aristocracy. 

But moreover the ambition of the Statesmen and the Nobles 
was re-enforced by the pious desire of the humbler classes. 
Some fifty millions of men in Russia held one creed; and they 
held it too with the earnestness of which Western Europe used 
to have experience in earlier times. In her wars Russia had 
always been engaged against nations which were not of her 
faith; and twice at least in the very agony of her national life, 
and when all other hope was gone, she had been rescued by 
_the warlike zeal of her priesthood. By these causes love of 
country and devotion to the Church had become so closely 
welded into one engrossing sentiment, that good Muscovites 
could not sever the one idea from the other;' and although 
they were by nature a kind and good-humored race of men, 
they were fierce in the matter of their religion. . They had 
heard of Infidels who had torn down the crosses from the 
Churches of Christ, and possessed themselves of the great city, 
the capital of the Orthodox Church; and, as far as they could 
judge, it would be a work of piety, with the permission of the 
Czar their father, to slaughter and extirpate the Turks. But 
this was not all. They knew that in the Turkish dominions 
there were ten or fourteen millions of men holding exactly the 
same faith as themselves, who were kept down in thraldom by 
the Moslems, and they had heard tales of the sufferings of these 
their brethren which seemed to call for vengeance. The very 
indulgence with which the Turks had allowed these Christians 
to have a distinct corporate existence in the Empire gave 
weight to their prayers; for, instead of being only a disorgan- 
ized multitude of sufferers, they seemed to be, as it were, a sup- 
pliant nation, ever kneeling before the great Czar, and implor- 
ing him to deliver them from their captivity. It was not pos- 

1 T owe my perception of the causes which rendered the Russian Church 


so intensely national to Arthur Stanley’s most interesting work upon the 
Greek Church. 


Cuar. LV.] BROUGHT ON ‘THE WAR. 57 


sible for the Russian people to conceive any enterprise more 
worthy of their nation and their Church than to raise high the 
banner of the Cross, drive the infidel Turks out of Europe, and 
cause the broad provinces in which their Christian brethren 
lived and suffered to be blended with ‘Holy Russia.’ It is true 
that the Muscovite peasants were not an enterprising race of 
men, and it might be hard perhaps to find a villager, who, if he 
could have his choice, would rather be a soldier of the Cross 
than remain at home in his hut; but the people knew that, 
whether there were peace or whether there were war, the exi- 
gency of their Czar’s military system would always go on con- 
suming their youth, and, since this engine of a vast standing 
army was destined to.be kept up and to be fed with their flesh 
and blood, they desired in their simple hearts that it should be 
used for a purpose which they believed to be holy and right- 
eous. To a cause having all these sanctions, the voice of 
prophecy could not be wanting. Seers foretold the destruc- 
tion of the Turks by the men of the yellow hair. 

Yet, vast as it was in its aggregate force, the heart’s desire 
of a whole nation would have been vague and dim of sight if 
it had not some famed city for its goal, or some outward and 
visible figure or sign to which the multitude could point as the 
symbol of its great intent. The people were not without their 
goal nor without their symbol, for the city whither they tend- 
ed was the imperial city of Constantine, once mistress of the 
world, and the Cross that the Emperor had seen in the heav- 
ens was still the sign in which the Church said they must con- 
quer. For such as were the politic few there was the Golden 
Horn with its command of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, 
and all its fair promise of wealth and empire. In the horizon 
of the pious multitude there rose the dome of St.Sophia. Am- 
bition was sanctified by Religion. The most pious might 
righteously desire that the devotion of their militant Church 
should be aided by the wisdom of the serpent, and the most 
worldly-minded statesman could look with approval upon the 
scheme of a lucrative crusade. The Emperor Alexander the 
First, when he declared that for the time he was trying to with- 
stand the ambition of his people, acknowledged that he was 
‘the only Russian who resisted the views of his subjects upon 
©Turkey.’! 

- The Czar was the head of the Church. It was not without 
raising scruples in the minds of the pious that his predecessors 
had been able to attain ecclesiastical authority ; but this slad- 


1 Quoted by Sir H. Seymour, ‘ Eastern Papers,’ part v., p. 11. 
C2 


58 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuav. IV; 


ow of doubt upon the title of the lay Pontiff made it all the 
more needful for him to take care that his zeal should be above 
reproach. It is true that the great body of the Muscovite peo- 
ple were simple and docile, not partaking in cares of Goyern- 
ment, aud that even among the most powerful Nobles there 
were none who would be unwilling to leave the choice of time 
and of measures to the Chief of the State, but still the relig- 
ious mind of the vast empire would have been dangerously 
shocked if the priests had been forced to know that the Czar 
fniled to share the pious desire of his people; and the minds 
of men accustomed to bend their thoughts to the aggrandize- 
ment of the nation would be overclouded and chilled if they 
saw that the Emperor was growing forgetful of their favorite 
enuse. 

But the prospect of what would follow upon the re alization 
of this scheme of ambition was dim. The sovereignty of Eu- 
ropean Turkey could scarcely be added to the possessions of 
the Czar without tending to dislocate the system of his em- 
pire, for plainly it would be difficult to sway the vast North- 
ern territories of All the Russias by orders sent from the Bos- 
phorus, and yet, by force of its mere place in the world, Con- 
stantinople seemed destined to be the capital of a great State. 
Therefore, in the event of its falling into the hands of the Rom- 
anoffs, it may be thought more likely that the imperial city 
would draw dominion to itself, and so become the metropolis 
of some new assemblage of territories than that it would sink 
into the condition of a provincial sea-port. The statesmen of 
St. Petersburg have always understood the deep import of the 
change which the throne of Constantine would bring with it; 
and it may be imagined that considerations founded on this 
aspect of the enticing conquest have mingled with those sug- 
gested by the phy: sical difficulties of i invasion, the obstinate valor 
of the Turks, and the hostility of the great Powers of Hurope. 
Still, the prize was so unspeakably alluring to an aristocracy. 
fired with national ambition, and to a people glowing with pi- 
ety, that apparently it was necessary for the Czar to seem as 
though he were always doing something for furthering a scheme 
of conquest thus-endeared to the nation. He was liable to be 
deemed a failing champion of the faith when he was not labor- 
ing to restore the insulted Cross to the Church of Constantine ; 
he was ¢ hilling the healthy zeal of his ablest servants if he liv ed 
idle days m: king no approach to the Bosphorus. 

Upon the whole, it resulted from the various motives tend- 
Its irre olute Ing to govern the policy of the State that the am- 
Bare: bition of the Russian emperors in the direction of 


nar. IV-] BROUGHT ON THE WAR.’ 59 


Constantinople was generally alive and watchful, and some- 
times active, but was always irresolute.. The First Napoleon 
said in the early years of this century! that the Czars were al- 
ways threatening Constantinople and never taking it; and 
what he said then had already been true for a lone time, and 
his words continued to be a true. description of the Russian 
policy for half a century afterward. Evidently it answered the 
purpose of the Czars to have it thought amongst their own 
people that they were steadily advancing toward the conquest, 
but they always suffered their reasons for delay to prevail. 
They had two minds upon the question. ‘They were willing, 
but they were also unwilling, and this clashing of motives 
caused them to falter. At home they naturally tried to make 
their ambition apparent. Abroad, as might be expected, they 
were more careful to display the inclinations forced upon them 
by prudence; but it would seem that tlis double face was not 
simply a deceptive contrivance, but resulted from imperfect 
volition. The project against Constantinople was a scheme of 
conquest continually to be delayed, but never discarded, and, 
happen what might, it was never to be endured that the pros- 
pect of Russia’s attaining some day to the Bosphorus should 
be shut out by the ambition of any other Power. 

Of course it followed that a great State ambition of this 
watchful but irresolute kind would be stimulated to an in- 
creased activity by the disappearance of any of the chief ob- 
stacles lying in the way of the enterprise ; and especially this 
would be the case whenever the course of affairs seemed to be 
unfavorable to an alliance against Russia between the other 
great Powers of Europe. 

The Emperor Nicholas held an absolute sway over his Em- 
The Emperor pire, and his power was not moderated by the sal- 
Nicholas, utary resistance of ministers who had strength 
enough to decline to take part in acts which they disapproved. 
The old restraints which used sometimes to fetter the power 
of the Russian monarchs had fallen away, and nothing had yet 
come in their stead. Holding the boundless authority of an 
Oriental Potentate, the Czar was armed besides with all the 
power which is supplied by high organizatign and the clever 
appliances of modern times. What he chose to do he actually 
did. He might be sitting alone and reading a dispatch, and if 
it happened that its contents made him angry, he could touch 
a bell and kindle a war without hearing counsel from any liv- 
ing man. In the room where he labored he could hear over- 


’ ‘Ta Russic a trop menacé Constantinople sans le prendre.’ 


60 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuar. IV, 


head the clicking of machinery, and he liked the sound of the 
restless magnets, for they were giving instant effect to his will 
in regions far away. He was of a stern, unrelenting nature. 
He displayed, when he came to be tried, a sameness of ideas 
and of language and a want of resource which indicated pov- 
erty of intellect; but this dearth within was masked by the 
brillianecy of the qualities which adorned the surface, and he 
was so capable of business, and had such a vast activity, that 
he was able to arrogate to himself an immense share of the ae- 
tual governance of his subjects. Indeed by striving to extend 
his management beyond the proper compass of a single mind 
he disturbed the march of business, and so far superseded the 
responsibility of his servants, that he ended by lessening to a 
perilous extent the number of gifted men who in former times 
had taken part in the connsels of the State. Still, this widely- 
ranging activity kept alive the awe with which his subjects 
watched to see where next he would strike; and made the na- 
tion feel that, along with his vast stature and his commanding 
presence, he carried the actual power of the State. He had 
been merciless toward the Polish nation; but whilst this stern- 
ness made him an object of hatred to millions of diseomfited 
men, and to other millions of men who felt for them in their 
sorrows, it tended, perhaps, at the time to increase his ascend- 
ency, by making him an object of dread. - And it trebled the 
delight of being with him in his gentle mood. When he was 
friendly or chose to seem so, there was a glow and frankness 
in his manner which had an irresistible charm. He had dis- 
carded in some measure his predecessor’s system of governing 
Russia through the aid of foreigners; and took a pride in his 
own people, and understood their worth. In the great empire 
of the North religion is closely blended with the national sen- 
timent, and in this composite shape it had a strong hold upon 
the Czar. It did not much govern him in his daily life, and 
his way of joining in the service of the Church seemed to dis- 
close something like impatience and disdain, but no one doubt- 
ed that faith was deeply rooted in his mind. He had the air 
of a man raised above the level of common worshipers who im- 
agined that he was appointed to serve the cause of his Church 
by great imperial achievements, and not by humble feats of 
morality and devotion. It will be seen but too plainly that the - 
Emperor Nicholas could be guilty of saying one thing and do- 
ing another, and it may be supposed therefore that at once and 
in plain terms he ought to be charged with duplicity : yet there 
are circumstances which make one falter in coming to such a 
conclusion. He had reigned, and had personally governed for 


Cuap. IV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 61 


some seven-and-twenty years, and although during that period 
he had done much to raise bitter hatred, the most sagacious 
‘statesmen in Europe placed faith in his personal honor. It is 
certain that he had the love of truth. When he sought to 
speak of what he deemed fair and honorable, he traveled into 
our language for the word which spoke his meaning, and claim- 
ed to have the same standard of uprightness as an English 
‘gentleman.’ It is known also that his ideal of human gran- 
deur was the character of the Duke of Wellington. No man 
could have made that choice without having truth in him. 

It would seem, however, that beneath the virtues which for 
more than a quarter of a century had enabled the Czar to stand 
before Europe as a man of honor and truth there lurked a set 
of opposite qualities; and that when he reached the period of 
life which has often been found a trying one to men of the 
Romanoff family, a deterioration began to take place which 
shook the ascendant of his better nature. After the beginning 
of 1853 there were strange alternations in his conduct. At 
one time he seemed to be so frank and straightforward that 
the most wary statesmen could not and would not believe him 
to be intending deceit. Then, and even within a few hours, 
he would steal off and be false. But the vice which he dis- 
closed in those weak intervals was not the profound deceit of 
statecraft, but rather the odd purposeless cunning of a gipsy 
or a savage, who shows by some sudden and harmless sign of 
his wild blood that even after years of conformity to European 
ways he has not been completely reclaimed. For the present, 
however, the Emperor Nicholas must be looked upon not 
merely as he was, but as he seemed to be; and what he seem- 
ed to be in the beginning of 1853 was a firm righteous man too 
brave and too proud to be capable of descending to falsehood. 

Nicholas had a violent will; but of course when he under- 
went the change which robbed him of his singleness of mind, 
his resolves, notwithstanding their native force, could not fail 
to lose their momentum. He was a man too military to be 
warlike; and was not only without the qualities for wielding 
an army in the field, but was mistaken also as to the way in 
which the best soldiers are made: under his sway Russia was 
so oppressively drilled that much of the fire and spirit of en- 
terprise which are needed for war was crushed out by military 
training. No man, however, could toil with more zeal than he 
did in that branch of industry which seeks to give uniformity 
and mechanic action to bodies of men. He was an unwearied 
inspector of troops. He kept close at hand great numbers of 
small wooden images clothed in various uniforms, and one of 


62 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cirar. IV? 


the rooms in his favorite palace was filled with these military 
dolls. 

The Emperor Nicholas had not been long upon the throne 
when he showed that he was a partaker of the ambition of his 
people ; for in 1828 he had begun an invasion of Turkey, and 
was present with his army in some of the labors of the cam- 
paign: but his experience was of a painful kind. The mechan- 
ical organization in which he delighted broke down under 
stress of real war carried on upon an extended line of opera- 
tions. In the country of the Danube his soldiery perished fast 
from sickness and want; and although he had so well chosen 
his time that the Sultan was without an ally, and (having but 
lately put to death his own army) was in an ill condition for 
war, still he encountered so much of obstinate and troublesome 
resistance from the Turks, and was so ill able to cope with it, 
that at the instance, as it is said, of his own Generals, he re- 
tired from the scene of conflict, and went back to St. Peters- 
burg, with the galling knowledge that he was without the 
gifts which make an able commander in the field; he could 
not but see, too, that the military reputation of Russia was 
brought into great peril; and although in the following year 
he was rescued from the dangerous straits into which he 
had run by the brilliant audacity of Diebitsch, by the skill of 
his diplomacy, and above all by indulgent fortune, still he was 
so chastened by the anxiety of the time, and by the narrow- 
ness of his escape from a great humiliation, that he ceased to 
entertain any hope or intention of dismembering Turkey, ex- 
cept in the event of there occurring a chain of circumstances 
which should enable him to act with the concurrence of other 
great Powers. 

But the Emperor knew that the pride of his people would 
be deeply wounded if any great changes should take place in 
the Ottoman Empire without bringing gain to Russia and ae- 
celerating her march to Constantinople ; and therefore he be- 
lieved that, until he was prepared to take a part in dismem- 
bering the Empire, it was his interest to preserve it intact. 
For more than twenty years his actions. as well as his declared 
intentions were in accordance with this view; and it would be 
wrong to believe that the policy thus shown forth to the world 
was only a mask. Just as the love of killing game generates 
a sincere wish to preserve it, so the very fact that the Czar 
looked upon Turkey as eventual booty, made him anxions to 
protect it from every other kind of danger. In 1833, the Em- 
peror Nicholas saved the Sultan and his dynasty from destrue- 
tion; and, although he accompanied this measure with an act 


Cuar. IV-] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 68 


offensive to the other maritime powers,' his conduct toward 

‘Turkey was loyal. In 1840 he again acted faithfully toward 

the Sultan, and joined with England and the leading Powers 

ot Germany in preventing the disruption of the Ottoman Em- 
ire. 

In 1844 the Czar came to England, and anxiously strove to 
find out whether there were any of our leading statesmen who 
had grown weary of a conservative policy in Turkey. He 
talked confidentially with the Duke of Wellington and Lord 
Aberdeen, and also no doubt with Sir Robert Peel; but evi- 
dently meeting with no encouragement, he covered his retreat 
by giving in his adhesion to England’s accustomed policy, and, 
to do this with the better effect, he left in our Foreign Office 
a solemn declaration not only of his own policy, but likewise, 
strange to say, of the policy of Austria; and all this he blend- 
ed in a somewhat curious manner with words which might be 
read as importing that his views had obtained the sanction of — 
the English Government. It would seem that our Govern- 
ment agreed, as they naturally would, to that part of the Czar’s 
memorandum which was applicable to the existing state of 
things, and which, in fact, echoed the known opinion of Eng- 
land; and they also assented to the obvious proposition that 
the event of a breaking up of the Ottoman Empire would 
make it important for the great Powers to come to an under- 
standing amongst themselves ; but it must be certain that the 
Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Aberdeen re- 
frained, as it is the custom of our Statesmen to do, from all 
hypothetical engagements. ‘ Russia and England,’ said this 
Memorandum, ‘are mutually penetrated with the conviction, 
‘that it is for their common interest that the Ottoman Porte 
‘should maintain itself in the state of independence and of ter- 
‘ritorial possession which at present constitutes that Empire. 
‘ Being agreed on this principle, Russia and England have an 
‘equal interest in uniting their efforts in order to keep up the 
‘ existence of the Ottoman Empire, and to avert all the dangers 
* which can place in jeopardy its safety. With this object, the 
‘ essential point is to suffer the Porte to live in repose, without 
‘needlessly disturbing it by diplomatic bickerings, and with- 
‘ out interfering, without absolute necessity, in its internal af- 
‘fairs. Then, after showing that the tendency of the Turkish 
Government to evade treaties and ill-use its Christian subjects 
ought to be checked rather by the combined and friendly re- 
monstrance of all the Powers, than by the separate action of 


* The Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. 


64 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IV. 


one, the Memorandum proceeded :—‘If all the great Powers 
eft ankly adopt this line of conduct, they will have a well-found- 

‘ed expectation of preserving the existence of Turkey. How- 
‘ever, they must not conceal from themselves how many ele- 
‘ments of dissolution that Empire contains within itself. Un- 
‘foreseen circumstances may hasten its fall. . . . In the uncer- 
‘tainty which hovers over the future, a single fundamental 
‘idea seems to admit of a really practical application: it is, 
‘that the danger which may result from a catastrophe in Tur- 
‘key will be much diminished if, in the event of its occurring, 
‘Russia and England have come to an understanding as to the 
‘course to be taken by them in common. That understanding 
‘will be the more beneficial, inasmuch as it will have the full 
‘assent of Austria. Between her and Russia there exists al- 
‘ready an entire accord.’ 

Upon the whole, it would seem that from the peace of Adri- 
His policy from anople down to the beginning of 1853 the state of 
1829 to 1853. the Ozar’s mind upon the Eastern Question was 
this :—He was always ready to come forward as an eager and 
almost ferocious defender of his Church, and he deemed this 
motive to be one of such cogency that views resting on mere 
policy and prudence were always in danger of being overborne 
by it; but, in the absence of events tending to bring this fiery 
principle into action, he was really unwilling to face the troubles 
which would arise from the dismemberment of ‘Turkey unless 
he could know beforehand that England would act with him. 
If he could have obtained any anterior assurance to that effect, 
he would have tried perhaps to accelerate the disruption of the 
Sultan’s Empire; but, as England always declined to found 
any engagements upon the hypothesis of a catastrophe which 
she wished to prevent, the Emperor had probably accustomed 
himself to believe that Providence did not design to allot to 
him the momentous labor of governing the fall of the Ottoman 
Empire. He therefore chose the other alter native, and not 
only spoke, but really did much for the preservation of an Em- 
pire which he was not yet ready to destroy. Still, whenever 
any subject of irritation occurred, the attractive force of the 
opposite policy was more or less felt, for it is not every man, 
who, having to choose between two lines of action, can resolve 
to hold to the one and frankly discard the other. In general, 
the principle governing such a conflict is found to be analo- 
gous to the law which determines the composition of mechan- 
ic forces, and the mental struggle does not result in a clear 
adoption of either of the alternatives, but in a mean betwixt 
the two. It was thus with the ¢ Emperor Nicholas whenever 


Cuar. V.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 65 


it happened that he was irritated by questions connected with 
the action of the Turkish Government. At such times, his con- 
duct, swayed in one direction by the notion of dismembering 
the Empire, and in the other direction by the policy of main- 
taining it, resulted in an endeavor to establish what the English 
Ambassador called ‘a predominant influence over the counsels. 
‘of the Porte, tending in the interest of absolute power to ex- 
‘clude all other influences, and to secure the means, if not of 
‘hastening the downfall of the Empire, at least of obstructing 
‘its improvement and settling its future destinies to the profit 
‘of Russia, whenever a propitious juncture should arrive.’! 


CHAPTER V. 


Ir happened that at a time? when the Emperor of Russia 
Troubles in Was wrought to anger by the triumph of the Latin 
Montenegro. over the Greek Church, there were troubles in one 
of the provinces bordering upon the Austrian territory, and 
Omar Pasha, at the head of a Turkish force, was operating 
against the Christians in Montenegro. The continuance of 
this strife on her frontier was, no doubt, alarming and vexa- 
tious to Austria; but with the Emperor Nicholas the tidings 
of a conflict going on between a Moslem soldiery and a Chris- 
tian people of the Greek faith could not fail to kindle his re- 
ligious zeal, and cause him to thirst for vengeance against the 
enemies of his Church. Of course the existence of this feeling 
on the part of the Czar was well understood at Vienna, and it 
was probably in order to anticipate his wishes and to remove 
his motives for interference that the Austrian Cabinet determ- 
ined to address a peremptory summons to the Porte calling upon 
the Sultan to withdraw his forces immediately from Montene- 
gro. The Czar secretly but studiously represented that upon 
this and every other matter touching his policy in Turkey he 
was in close accord with Austria.2 This, however, the Austrian 
Government denies. Truthful men declare that the Czar was 
not even informed beforehand of the demand which Austria had 
resolved to press upon the Porte. It is certain, however, that 
the Czar determined to act as though he were in close con- 
Count Lenin. Cert with Austria. Count Leiningen was to be the 
gen's mission. bearer of the Austrian summons, and simultaneously 


1 ¢Rastern Papers,’ part i., p. 237. 2? The winter of 1852-3. 
3 ¢Hastern Papers,’ part v., in several places. 


66 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. V. 


with the Count’s departure from Vienna, the Emperor Nicholas 
resolved to dispatch to the Porte an Ambassador Extraordina- 
The Gare  2Y» Who was to declare that a refusal to withdraw 
plan ofsending Omar Pasha’s forces from Montenegro would be 
another mis regarded by the Czar as a ground of war between 
Porte at the him and the Sultan; and the Ambassador was also 
Samewme- to be charged with the duty of obtaining redress 
for the change which “had been made in the allotment of the 
Holy Sites to the contending Churches. It may seem strange 
that the Czar should propose to found a declaration of war 
upon a grievance which was put forward by the Cabinet of 
Vienna and not by himself, but he was always eager to stand 
forward as the protector of Christiana of his own Church who 
had taken up arms against their Moslem rulers; and when, as 
now, his conservative policy was disturbed by anger and re- 
ligious zeal, his ulterior views upon the Eastern Question be- 
came too vague, and also no doubt too alarming, to admit of 
their being made the subject of a treaty engagement with 
Austria. 

Apparently, then, the plan of the Emperor Nicholas was 
fans 20th this —he would make the rejection of Count Lein- 
Emperor ingen’s demand a ground of war against the Porte, 
pes ar and then acting under the blended motives fur- 
nished by the assigned cause of war and by his own separate 
grievance, he would avenge the wrong done to his Church by 
forcing the Sultan to submit to a foreion protectorate over all 
his provinces lying north of the Balkan. This, however, was 
only one view of the contemplated war. It might be applica- 
ble, if the occupation of the tributary provinces should evoke 
no element of trouble except the sheer resistance of the enemy; 
but the Czar, who did not well understand the Turkish Empire, 
was firmly convinced at this time that the approach of war 
would be followed by a rising of the Sultan’s Christian sub- 
jects. On the other hand he “feared, and with better reason, 
that if the angry Moslems should deem the Sultan remiss or 
faint-hearted in the defense of his territory, they might rise 
against their Government, and fall upon the Christian rayahs, 
whom they would regard as the abettors of the invasion. He 
could not fail to perceive that in the progress of the contem- 
plated operations he might be forced by events to give a vast 
extension to his views against the Sultan, and that, even against 
his will, and without being prepared for the crisis, he might 
find himself called upon to deal with the ruins of the Ottoman 
Empire in the midst of confusion and massacre. 


Cuar. VI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 67 


CHAPTER VI. 


Now therefore it became needful for the Emperor Nicholas 
to endeavor to divine the temper in which the other great 
Powers of Europe would be inclined to regard his intended 
pressure upon the Sultan and the eventual catastrophe which, 
even if he should wish it, he might soon be unable to avert. 
It was of deep moment to him to know what help or acqui- 
escence he might reckon upon, and what hostility he might 
have to encounter, if he should be called upon to take part in 
regulating the collapse of the Turkish Empire, and controlling 
the arrangements which were to follow. . 

He looked around. The policy of one of the great States 
Position of | Of Kurope was bent out of its true course, and in 
Austria in re- others there were signs of weak purpose. The 
gardto Turkey 75 
at the besin-. Power most deeply interested in preventing the 
ning of S23. dismemberment of European Turkey had already 
determined to press upon the Sultan an unjust and offensive 
demand, and although the statesmen of Vienna might have 
resolved in their own minds to stop short at some prescribed 
stage of the contemplated hostilities, it was plain that Austria, 
when once engaged in war against the Sultan, would lose the 
standing ground of a Power which undertakes to resist ch ange, 
and would become so e entangled by the mere progress of events, 
that it would be difficult for her to extricate herself, and revert 
to a conservative policy. Indeed the Emperor Nicholas might 
fairly expect that Austria, having committed the original mis- 
take of disturbing the peace, would afterward strive to cling 
to his friendship in the hope of being able to moderate his 
course of action, and avert or mitigate the downfall of the 
Turkish Empire. 

With respect to Prussia, the Emperor Nicholas was free 
from anxiety. “Ag long as the measures against the 
Sultan were carried on in alliance with Austri: 1, the 
States of Germany had little ground for fearing that the inter- 
est which they had in the freedom of the Lower Danube would 
be forgotten; and, this object being secured or regarded as 
secure, Prussia had less interest in “the fate of the Ottoman 
Empire than any of the other great Powers. There being 
therefore no reason of state obliging him to take a contr ary 


: 4 


Of Prussia. 


68 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuare. VI 


course, it was to be expected that the King of Prussia would 
continue to live under the ascendency which his Imperial 
brother-in-law had long been accustomed to maintain. 

France having great military and naval forces, and a Medi- 
terranean sea-board, was well entitled to frame for 
herself any honest system of policy which she might 
deem to be the best guide for her conduct in Eastern affairs, 
but the time for her having a policy of her own had passed 
away; for she had fallen under the mere control of the Second 
Bonaparte, and in order to divine what France would do, it 
was necessary to make out what scheme of action her ruler 
would deem to be most conducive to his comfort and safety. 
Even the supposition that he would copy the First Napoleon 
gave no sufficing clew for saying what his Eastern policy ought 
to be, or what it was, or what it was likely to be in any future 
week. France as wielded by a Bonaparte had been known to 
the Sultan, sometimes as a friendly Power, sometimes as a 
Power pretending to be friendly to him, but seer etly bargain- 
ing for the dismemberment of his empire; sometimes as a mere 
predatory State seizing his provinces in time of peace and with- 
out the pretense of a quarrel,! and sometimes even as a rival 
Mahometan Power, for it is known that the First Bonaparte 
did not seruple to call himself in Egypt a true Mussulman ;? 
and although he now and then claimed to be ‘the eldest son of 
‘the Catholic Chur ch,’ he first introduced himself in the Levant 
as the soldier of a nation which had ‘renounced the Messiah.’ 

Upon the whole, there seemed to be no reason why the new 
French Emperor should refuse to join with Russia in trying to 
bring about the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, and to 
arrange the distribution of the spoil. Indeed, the great exten- 
sion which France had given of late to her navy render ed views 
of this kind less chimerical than they were at the time of the 
Secret Articles of Tilsit. But, on the other hand, it was the 
French Government which had provoked the religious excite- 
ment under which Nicholas was laboring, and although it is 
believed that when his troubles increased upon him the Ozar 
afterward made overtures to France, it would seem that in the 
beginning of 1853 he was too angry and too scornful toward 
the French Emperor to be able to harbor the thought of mak- 
ing him his ally. Of the danger lest France should suddenly 
adopt a conservative policy, and undertake to resist his art ‘angre- 
ments in the East of Europe, the Emperor Nicholas made light, 


Of France. 


1 e.g. Bonaparte’s predatory invasion of Egypt in time of peace. 
2 A falsified copy of the manifesto was sent to France. The one really 
issued represented Bonaparte as a Mahometan. 
? 


Cuar. VL] BROUGHT ON 'THE WAR. 69 


for he had resolved at this time not to place himself in conflict 
with England, and, the operations of any Western Power in 
Turkey being dependent upon sea communications, he did not 
think it to be within the wide compass of possible events that 
France, single-handed and without the alliance of her maritime 
neighbor, would or could obstruct him in the Levant. ‘He 
‘cared,’ he said, ‘very little what line the French might think 
‘proper to take in Eastern affairs, and he had apprised the 
‘Sultan that if his assistance were required for resisting the 
‘menaces of the French it was entirely at the service of the 
‘Sultan.? ‘When we (Russia and England) are agreed, I am 
‘quite without anxiety as to the West of Europe: it is imma- 
‘terial what the others may think or do.’ 

There remained then only England, and upon the whole it 
Of England. had come to this: that the Emperor Nicholas would 
ame feel able to meet the emergency caused by the down- 
there. fall of the Sultan, and might perhaps be inclined to 
do a little toward bringing about the catastrophe, if beforehand 
he could come to an understanding with the English Govern- 
ment as to the way in which Europe should deal with the frag- 
ments of the Turkish Empire. But he had learned, as he said, 
that an alliance with England must depend upon the feeling 
of the country at large,’ and this he strove hard to understand. 

England had long been an enigma to the political students 
of the Continent, but after the summer of 1851 they began to 
imagine that they really at last understood her. They thought 
that she was falling from her place among nations; and indeed 
there were signs which might well lead a shallow observer te: 
fancy that her ancient spirit was failing her. An army is but 
the limb ofa nation, and it is no more given to a people to com- 
bine the possession of military strength with an unmeasured 
devotion to the arts of peace than it is for a man to be feeble 
and helpless in the general condition of his body, and yet to 
have at his command a strong right arm for the convenience of 
self-defense. The strength of the right arm is as the strength 
of the man: the prowess of an army is as the valor and war- 
like spirit of the nation which gives it her flesh and blood. 
England having suffered herself to grow forgetful of this truth, 
seemed in the eyes of foreigners to be declining. It was not 
the reduction of the military and establishments which was the, 
really evil sign: for—to say nothing of ancient times — the 
Swiss in Europe, and some of the States of the North Amer- 
ican continent, have shown the world that a people which al- 


_ 1 ¢‘Rastern Papers,’ part v., p. 10. * Tbid., p.1. 3 Tbid., part iii. 


70 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [CuHap. VI 


most dispenses with a standing army, may yet be among the 
most resolute and warlike of nations; but there was in England 
a general decrying of arms. Well-meaning-men harangued 
and lectured in this spirit. What they sincerely desired was 
a continuance of peace; but instead of taking the thought and 
acquiring the knowledge which might have qualified them to 
warn their fellow-countrymen against steps tending to a need: 
less war, they squandered their indignation upon the deceased 
authors of former wars, and used language of such breadth 
that what they said was as applicable to one war as to anoth, 
er. At length they generated a sect called the ‘ Peace Party,’ 
which denounced war in strong indiscriminate terms. 
Moreover at this time extravagant veneration was avowed 
for mechanical contrivances, and the very words which grate- 
ful nations had wrought from out of their hearts in praise of 
tried chiefs and heroes were plundered, as it were, from the 
warlike professions, and given to those who for their own gain 
could make the best goods. It was no longer enough to say 
that an honest tradesman was a valuable member of society, 
or that a man who contrived a good machine was ingenious. 
More was expected from those who had the utterance of the 
public feeling, and it was announced that ‘ glory’ and ‘ honor’ 
—nay,to prevent all mistake, ‘true honor’ and ‘true glory’ 
were due to him who could produce the best articles of trade. 
At length in the summer of 1851 it was made to appear to for- 
eigners that this singular faith had demanded and obtained an 
outward sign of its acceptance, and a solemn recognition by 
Church and State. The foreigners were mistaken. The truth 
is, that the English in their exuberant strength and their care- 
lessness about the strict import of words are accustomed to 
indulge a certain extravagance in their demonstrations of pub- 
lic feeling, and this is the more bewildering to foreign minds 
because it goes along with practical moderation and wisdom. 
What the English really meant was to give people an oppor- 
tunity of seeing the new inventions and comparing all kinds of 
patterns, but above all to have a new kind of show and bring 
about an immense gathering of people. Perhaps too in the 
secret hearts of many who were weary of tame life there lurk- 
ed a hope of animating tumults. This was all the English 
really meant. But the political philosophers of the Continent 
were resolved to impute to the islanders a more profound in- 
tent. They saw in the festival a solemn renouncing of all such 
dominion as rests upon force. England, they thought, was 
closing her great career by a whimsical act of abdication, and 
it must be acknowledged that there was enough to confound 


Cuar. VI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. oO 


men accustomed to lay stress upon symbols. . For the glory 
of mechanic Arts, and in token of their conquest over nature, 
a cathedral of glass climbed high over the stately elms of 
Knightsbridge, inclosing them, as it were, in a casket the work 
of men’s hands, and it was not thought wrong nor impious to 
give the work the sanction of a religious ceremony. It was 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury that the money-changers 
were brought back into the temple. Few protested. One 
man indeed, abounding in Scripture, and inflamed with the 
sight of the glass Babel ascending to the skies, stood up, and 
denounced the work, and for etold “ wars” and ““judgments.”? 
. But he was a prophet speaking to the wrong generation, and 
no one heeded him. Indeed it seemed likely that the sound- 
ness of his mind would be questioned, and if he went on to 
foretell that within three years England would be engaged in 
a bloody war springing out of a dispute about a key and a sil- 
ver star, he was probably adjudged to be mad, for the whole 
country at the time felt sure of its peaceful temper. Certain- 
ly it was a hard task for the sagacity of a foreigner to pierce 
through these outward signs, and see that, notw ithstanding 
them all, the old familiar ‘ Kastern Question’ ‘might be so used 
as to make it rekindle the warlike ardor of Eneland. Even 
for Englishmen, until long after the beginning of 1853, it was 
difficult to foresee how the country would be w illing to act in 
regard to the defense of Turkey, and the representatives of 
foreign Powers accredited to St. James’s might be excused if 
they assured their Courts that England was deep in pursuits 
which would hinder her from all due assertion of her will as a 
great European Power. 

Thus foreigners came to believe that the English nature was 
changed, and that for the future the country would always be 
tame in Europe, and it chanced that in the beginning of the 
year 1853 they were strengthened in their faith by observing 
the structure of the Ministry then recently formed, for Lord 
Palmerston, whose name had become associated with the idea 
of a resolute and watchful policy, was banished to the Home 
Office, and the Prime Minister was Lord Aberdeen, the same 
statesman who had held the seals of the Foreign Office in for- 
mer years, when Austria was vainly entreating England to join 
with her in defending the Sultan. The Emperor Nicholas 
heard the tidings of Lord Aberdeen’s elevation to the premier- 
ship with a delight which he did not suppress. Yet this very 
event, as will be seen, was 4 main link in the chain of causes 


1 This.I witnessed. 


"9 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. VI, 


which was destined to draw the Czar into war, and bring him 
in misery to the grave. | 

But if there was a phantasy in vogue which seemed likely 
to make England acquiesce in transactions adverse to her ac- 
customed policy in the East, there were other counsels afloat 
which, although they were based on very different views, 
seemed to tend in the same direction, for some of our country- 
men were beginning to perceive that the restoration of a Bo- 
napartist Empire in France would bring back with it the tra- 
ditions and the predatory schemes of the First Napoleon. 
These advisers were unwilling that the elements of the great 
alliance which thirty-eight years before had delivered Europe 
from its thraldom should now be cast asunder for the mere 
sake of giving a better effect to the policy which the Foreign 
Office was accustomed to follow upon the Eastern Qustion. 
And in truth, this same Eastern policy, though held by almost 
all responsible statesmen, was not so universally received in 
England as to go altogether unchallenged. The notion of En- 
gland’s standing still, and suffering the Turks to be driven 
from Europe, was not deemed so preposterous as to be unwor- 
thy of being put forward by men commanding great means of 
persuasion; and before the new year! was far advanced the 
Emperor Nicholas had means of knowing that the old English 
policy of averting the dismemberment of Turkey would be 
gravely questioned, and brought in an effective way to the test 
of printed discussion. Upon the whole, therefore, it seemed to 
the Czar that now, if ever, England might be willing to acqui- 
esce in his encroachments upon Turkey, and even perhaps to 
abet him in schemes for the actual dismemberment of the Em- 
pire. 
The Minister who represented the Queen at the Russian 
Sir Hamilton Court was Sir Hamilton Seymour. It is said that 
Seymour. before there was a prospect of his being accredited 
at St. Petersburg he had conceived a high admiration of the 
qualities of the Emperor Nicholas, and that this circumstance 
becoming known to the Czar, tended, at first, to make the En- 
elish Minister more than commonly welcome at the Imperial 
Court. Sir Hamilton was not so constituted as to be liable to 
the kind of awe which other diplomatists too often felt in the 
majestic presence of the Emperor; but his dispatches show 
that he was much interested and, so to speak, amused by the 
conversation of a prince who wielded with his own very hand 
the power of All the Russias. .Moreover, Sir Hamilton had 


+ 1853. 


* Onar. VI] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. "3 


the quickness and the presence of mind which enable a man to 
seize the true bearing and import of a sentence just uttered, 
and to meet it at the instant with the few and appropr iate 
words which convey the needful answer, and provoke a still 
farther disclosure. 

On the night of the 9th of January, 1853, the English Min: 
ister was at a party gathered in the palace of the Archduchess 
Helen, when the Emperor Nicholas approached him, and drew 
him into conversation. 

~*You know my feelings,’ the Emperor said, ‘ with regard 
His conversa. tO England. What I have told you before I say 
tion with the ‘again: it was intended that the two countries 
Emperor. ¢should be upon terms of close amity; and I feel 
‘sure that this will continue to be the case. . . . I repeat that 
‘it is very essential that the two Governments—that is, that 
‘the English Government and I, and I and the English Gov- 
‘ernment—should be on the best terms; and the necessity was 
‘never greater than at present. I beg you to convey these 
“words to Lord John Russell. When we are agreed, I am 
‘quite without anxiety as to the West of Europe; it is imma- 
‘terial what the others may think or do. As to Turkey, that is 
‘another question: that country is in a critical state, and may 
‘give us alla great deal of trouble. And now I will take my 
‘leave of you.’ The Emperor then shook hands with Sir Ham- 
ilton Seymour, and believed that he had closed the conversa- 
tion, but the skilled diplomatist saw and grasped his opportu- 
nity, and, whilst his hand was still held by the Emperor, Sir 
Hamilton Seymour said, ‘Sir, with your gracious permission, I 

‘would desire to take a gr eat liberty.’ ‘ Certainly,’ his Majes- 
ty replied; ‘what is it—let me hear.’ Sir Hamilton said, ‘I 
‘should be particularly glad that your Majesty should adda 
‘few words, which may tend to calm the anxiety with respect 
‘to the affairs of Turkey which passing events are so calculated 
“s excite on the part of her Majesty’s Government; perhaps 

‘you will be pleased to charge me with some additional assur- 
“ances of this kind.’ 

The Emperor’s words and manner, although still very kind, 
showed that he had no intention of speaking to Sir Hamilton 
of the demonstration which he was about to make in the South. 
He said, however, at first with a little hesitation, but, as he pro- 
ceeded, in an open and unhesitating manner: ‘The affairs of 
‘Turkey are in a very disorganized condition; the country it- 
‘self seems to be falling to pieces: the fall will be a great mis- 
‘fortune, and it is very important that England and Russia 

‘should come to a perfectly good understanding upon these 

Vor. 1—D 


14 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. VL 


‘affairs, and that neither should take any decisive step of which 
‘the other is not apprised.’ The Envoy answered, that this 
was certainly his view of the way in which Turkish questions 
should be treated; but. the Emperor then said, as if proceed- 
ing with his remark, ‘Stay! we have on our hands a sick man 
‘a very sick man; it will be,I tell you frankly, a great mis- 
fortune, if one of these days he should slip away from us, es- 
‘pecially before all necessary arrangements were made. But, 
‘however, this is not the time to speak to you on that matter. 

On the 22nd of January another interview took place be- 
tween the Emperor and the English Envoy. ‘I found his Maj- 
‘esty, writes Sir Hamilton Seymour, ‘alone; he received me 

‘with great kindness, saying that I had appeared desirous to 
“speak to him upon Eastern affairs ; ; that, on his side, there was 
‘no indiposition to do so, but that he must begin at a remote 
‘period. You know, his Majesty said, the dreams and plans in 
‘which the Empress Catherine was in the habit of indulging; 
‘these were handed down to our time; but while I inherited 
‘immense territorial possessions, I did not inherit those visions, — 
‘those intentions if you like to call them so. On the contrary, 
‘my country is so vast, so happily circumstanced in every way, 
‘that it would be unreasonable in me to desire more territor 7 
‘or more power than I possess ; on the contrary, I am the first 
‘to tell you that our great, perhaps our only danger, is that 
‘which would arise from an extension given to an Empire al- ~ 
‘ready too large. 

‘Close to us lies Turkey, and in our present condition noth- 
‘ing better for our interests can be desired; the times have 
‘gone by when we had any thing to fear from the fanatical 

‘spirit or the military enterprise of the Turks, and yet the 
‘country is strong enough, or has hitherto been strong enough, 
“to preserve its independence, and to insure respectful treat-— 
‘ment from other countries. 

‘ Well, in that Empire there are several millions of Christians 
.; whose interests I am called upon to watch over, while the 

Tight of doing so is secured to me by treaty. I may truly 

‘say that I make a moderate and sparing use of my right, and 
‘I will freely confess that it is one which is attended with ob- 
‘ligations occasionally very inconvenient; but I can not recede 
‘from the discharge of a distinct duty. Our religion, as estab- 
‘lished in this country, came to us from the East, “and there are 
‘feelings as well as obligations which never must be lost sight of. 

‘Now Turkey, in the condition which I have described, has 
‘by degrees fallen into such a state of decrepitude that, as I 
‘told you the other night, eager as we all are for the prolonged 


Cuap. VIL] BROUGHT ON ‘THE WAR. "5 


‘existence of the man (and that Iam as desirous as you can be 
‘for the continuance of his life I beg you to believe), he thay 
‘suddenly die upon our hands: we can not resuscitate what is 
‘dead ; if the Turkish Empire falls, it falls to rise no more; and 
‘I put it to you, therefore, whether it is not better to be pro- 
‘vided beforehand for a contingency, than to incur the chaos, 
‘confusion, and the certainty of a European war, all of which 
‘must attend the catastrophe if it should occur unexpectedly, 
‘and before some ulterior system has been sketched. This is 
‘the point to which I am desirous you should call the atten- 
‘tion of your Government.’ 

Sir Hamilton Seymour adverted to the objection which the 
English Government habitually felt to the plan of taking en- 
gagements upon possible eventualities, and said that disincli- 
nation might be expected in England to the idea of disposing 
by anticipation of the succession of an old friend and ally. 
‘The rule is a good one,’ the Emperor replied, ‘ good at all 
‘times, especially in times of uncertainty and change like the 
‘present; still it is of the greatest importance that we should 
‘understand one another, and not allow events to take us by 
‘surprise. Now I desire to speak to you as a friend and as 
‘a “gentleman :” if England and I arrive at an understanding 
‘in ‘this matter, as regards the rest it matters little to me; it 
‘is indifferent to me what others do or think. Frankly then I 
‘tell you plainly, that if England thinks of establishing herself 
‘one of these days at Constantinople I will not allow it. I do 
‘not attribute this intention to you, but it is better on these 
‘occasions to speak plainly; for my part Iam equally disposed 
‘to take the engagement not to establish myself there, as pro- 
‘prietor that is to say, for as occupier I do not say: it might 
‘happen that circumstances, ifno previous provision were made, 
‘if every thing should be left to chance, might place me in the 
‘position of occupying Constantinople.’ 

On the 20th of February the Emperor came up to Sir Ham- 
ilton Seymour at a party given by the Grand Duchess Heredi- 
tary, and in the most gracious manner took him apart, saying 
he desired to speak to him. ‘If your Government,’ said the 
Emperor, ‘has been led to believe that Turkey retains any 
‘elements of existence, your Government must have received 
‘incorrect information. I repeat to you that the sick man is 
“dying, and we can never allow such an event to take us by 
‘surprise. We must come to some understanding.’ 

Then Sir Hamilton Seymour felt himself able to infer that 
the Czar had settled in his own mind that the hour for bringing 
about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire must be at hand. 


bG TRANSACTIONS WHICH ~ [Cuar. VIL 


The next day the Emperor again sent for Sir Hamilton Sey- 
mour, and after combating the determination of the English 
Government to persist in regarding Turkey as a Power which 
might, and which probably would remain as she was, he at 
length spoke out his long reserved words of temptation. He 
thought, he said, that in the event of the dissolution of the Ot- 
toman Empire, it might be less difficult to arrive at a satisfac- 
tory territorial arrangement than was commonly believed, and 
then he proceeded: ‘The principalities are, in fact, an inde- 
‘pendent State under my protection: this might so continue. 
‘Servia might receive the same form of government. So 
‘agai with Bulgaria: there seems to be no reason why this 
‘province should not form an independent State. As to 
‘Egypt, I quite understand the importance to England of that 
‘territory. I can then only say, that if, in the event of a dis- 
‘tribution of the Ottoman succession upon the fall of the Em- 
‘pire, you should take possession of Egypt, I shall have no 
‘objection to offer. I would say the same thing of Candia: 
‘that island might suit you, and I do not know why it should 
‘not become an English possession.’ 

‘As I did not wish,’ writes Sir Hamilton Seymour, ‘that the 
‘Emperor should imagine that an English public servant was 
‘caught by this sort of overture, I simply answered that I had 
‘always understood that the English views upon Egypt did 
‘not go beyond the point of securing a safe and ready com- 
‘munication between British India and the mother country. 
‘Well,’ said the Emperor, ‘induce your Government to write 
‘again upon these subjects—to write more fully, and to do so 
‘ without hesitation. I have confidence in the English Govern- 
‘ment. It is not an engagement—a convention which I ask 
‘of them; it is a free interchange of ideas, and in case of need 
‘the word of a“ gentleman ;” that is enough between us.’} 

In answer to these overtures, the Government of the Queen 
Reception of disclaimed all notion of aiming at the possession of 
the Czar’s either Constantinople or any other of the Sultan’s 
overtures by 3 _ 
the English possessions, and accepted the assurances to the like 
Government. effect which were given by the Czar. It combated 
the opinion that the extinction of the Ottoman Empire was 
near at hand, and deprecated the discussions based on that 
supposition, as tending directly to produce the very result 
against which they were meant to provide. Finally, our Goy- 
ernment, with abundance of courtesy, but in terms very strin- 
gent and clear, peremptorily refused to enter into any kind of 


1 «Eastern Papers,’ part v. 


Cuar. VI.]) BROUGHT ON THE WAR. ri 


secret engagement with Russia for the settlement of the East- 
ern Question. 

These communications of January and February, 1853, were 
carried on between the Emperor of Russia and the English 
Government upon the understanding that they were to be held 
strictly secret; and for more than a year this concealment was 
maintained. It will be for a later page to show the ground on 
which the engagement for secrecy was broken, and the effect - 
which the disclosure wrought upon the opinion of Europe and 
upon the feelings of the people in England. 

The Czar was baffled by the failure of his somewhat shallow 
plan for playing the tempter with the English Government ; 
and an event which occurred at this same time still farther 
conduced to the abandonment of his half-formed designs 
against the Sultan. 

When Nicholas came to the singular resolution of declaring 
war against the Sultan in the event of his rejecting Austria’s 
demand respecting Montenegro, he imagined perhaps that his 
counsels were kept strictly secret; but it seems probable that 
a knowledge or suspicion of the truth may have reached the 
Turkish Gover nment, and helped to govern its decision. What 
Rowllt at is certain is that the demand made by Austria was 
Count Leinin- carried by Count Leiningen to Constantinople, and 
gen’s mission. that, having been put forward in terms offensiv ely 
peremptory, it was suddenly acceded to by the sagacious ad- 
visers of the Sultan. . 

This contingency seems to have been unforeseen by the 
Its effect upon LMperor Nicholas; at first the tidings of it kindled 
the plansof in his mind strong feelings of joy, “for he looked 
the Czar. 

upon the deliverance of Montenegro as a triumph 
of his Church over the Moslem. But he soon perceived that 
this sudden attainment of the object to be sought would dis- 
concert his plans. He found himself all at once deprived of 
the basis on which his scheme of action had rested; and, ex- 
cept in respect of the question of the key and the silver star, 
there was nothing that he had to charge against the Sultan. 
On the other hand, he had failed in his “endeavor to win over 
England to his views. He therefore relapsed into the use of 
the conservative language which he had been accustomed to 
apply to the treatment of the Eastern Question; professed his 
willingness to labor with England to prolong the existence of 
the Turkish Empire; and even went so far as to join with our 
Government in declaring that the way to achieve this result 
was to abstain ‘from harassing the Porte by imperious de- 
‘mands, put forward in a manner humiliating to its independ- 


78 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cnap. VII. 


He abandons | Cn¢e and its dignity.1 He abandoned the inten- 
the idea of go- tion of going to war, and even deprived himself of 
ing fowar the means of taking such a step with effect; for 
immediately upon hearing the result of Count Leiningen’s ‘mis- 
sion, he stopped the purchase of horses required for enabling 
him to take the field. 


CHAPTER VIL. 


Bur'when a man’s mind has been once thrown forward to- 
ward action, it gains so great a momentum, that the ceasing 
of the motive which first disturbed his repose does not in- 
stantly bring him to a stand. The Czar had found himself 
The pain ofin- SUddenly deprived of his ground of war against 
ppg the Porte by the embarrassing success of Count 
Leiningen’s mission, and in the same week he was robbed of 
his last hope of the alliance which he most desired by the 
failure of his overtures to England. He gave up the idea of 
going to war, and policy commanded that for a while he should 
rest; but already he had so acted that rest was pain to him. 
He could not but be tortured with the thought that the fur- 
tive words which he had uttered to Sir Hamilton Seymour on 
the 21st of February were known to the Queen of England ~ 
and to several of her foremost statesmen. Moreover, in a 
thousand forms, the bitter fruits of the delivery of the key 
and the Star of Bethlehem, and the tidings of the triumph 
which the Latins had gained over his Church, and of the ag- 
ony which this discomfiture had inflicted upon pious zealots, 
were coming home upon him, and from time to time in a fit- 
ful way were tormenting him, and then giving him a little 
rest, and then once more rekindling his fury. So he began to 
turn this way and that, in order that by turmoil he might 
smother the past, win back the self-respect which he had lost, 
and gain some counter-victory for his Church. He had al- 
ready gathered heavy bodies of troops in the south of his em- 
pire; he had a powerful fleet in the Euxine; the Bosphorus 
was nigh. The Turks, trusting mainly to heav enly power, 
were ill prepared. No French or English fleets were in the 
Levant. Above all, that shady garden at Therapia, command- 
ing the entrance of the Euxine, and seeming to be the fit dwell- 
ing-place for a Statesman who watched against invasion from 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part y., p. 25. 


Cuar. VIL] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 79 


the North was no longer paced by the English Ambassador. 
The great Eltchi was away. Many thought it was possible 
for the Czar to seize the imperial city, and treat with the an- 
ger of Europe from the Seraglio Point. 

But Nicholas, though he was capable of venturing a little 
way into wrong paths, and was often blinded to the difference | 
between right and wr ong by a sense of religious duty, was far 
from being a lawless prince. His conscience, warped by Faith, 
would easily reconcile him to an act of violence against a Ma- 
hometan Power; but he never questioned that “the fate of 
Turkey was a matter of concern to other Christian States as 
well as to his own; and he did not at this time intend to take 
any steps which England would regard as an outrage. The 
Tlie Gzar's Plan which he resorted to asa means of giving vent 
new scheme of to his anger, and satisfying that tendency to action 
aan which had been engendered by his preparations 
against the Sultan, was to go on with the scheme of sending 
an Extraordinary Embassy to Constantinople, to make up for 
the sudden loss of the Montenegro grievance by laying an in- 
creased stress upon the question of the Holy Places, and to 
force the Sultan to settle the dispute upon terms which, with- 
out wounding the Latins more than could be helped, should 
still do justice to the Greek Church. Any attempt at resist- 
ance which the Porte might make, by alleging the counter- 
pressure of France, was to be met by at once engaging that 
the Emperor of Russia, with all his forces, should defend the 
Sultan’s territory against every attack by a Western Power; 
and, well knowing that protective aid of such a kind was a 
burden and not a gift, the Emperor seems to have directed 
that this alliance should be not merely offered, but pressed. 

But the secret purpose of the mission was to make the past 
defaults of the Turkish government in regard to the Holy 
Places of Palestine a ground for extorting a treaty engage- 
ment by which the Greek Church throughout all Turkey would 
be brought under the protection of Russia. It seemed to the 
Ozar that his half-completed preparations for war would give 
to his demands exactly that kind of support which their of: 
fensive character required ; for the position of the troops gath- 
ered in Bessarabia, and the activity. of the last few months in 
Sebastopol would not fail to make the Turks see that force 
was at hand. The armaments in readiness were more than 
enough for the occupation of the Danubian Principalities ; and 
as soon as they should become swollen by the unfailing aid of 
rumors, they might easily grow to be thought a sufficing force 
for some great enterprise against Constantinople. 


80 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. VII. 


For some time the Emperor Nicholas hesitated in the choice 
His choice of Of the person to whom this extraordinary mission 
an Ambassa- should be intrusted. He hesitated between Count 
a Orloff and Prince Mentschikoff. He did not hesi- 
tate because he was doubting which of the two men would be 
the fittest instrument of his policy, but rather because he had 
not determined what his policy should be. Count Orloff was 
a wise and moderate man, much associated with the Ozar, and 
accustomed to speak to him with becoming freedom. ‘T’o 
make choice of this trusty friend was to avoid any such out- 
rage as would lead to the isolation of Russia. To choose 
Prince Mentschikoff was to choose a man whose feelings and 
prejudices might cause him to embitter the Czar’s dispute 
with the Porte, and who, to say the least, could have no pre- 
tension to moderate the zeal of his master. It was for this 
very reason perhaps that he was preferred. In an evil hour 
Nicholas brought his doubts to an end, and made choice of 
Prince Mentschikoff. 

Mentschikoff was a Prince of the sort which Court alma- 
Prince Ments- Nacs describe as ‘Serene.’ He was a General, a 
ehisoit High Admiral, the Governor of a great province, 
and in short, so far as concerns official and titular rank, was 
one of the chief of the Czar’s subjects; but Russia has not 
disclosed the grounds on which it was thought fit to intrust 
to him, first the peace, and then the military renown of his 
country ; for, when Russians are asked about the qualities of 
mind which caused a man to be chosen for a momentous em- 
bassy, and for the command of an army defending his country 
from invasion, they only say that the Prince was famous for | 
the strange and quaint sallies of his wit. However,he was of 
the school of those who desired to govern the affairs of the 
State upon principles violently Russian, and without the aid 
and counsel of foreigners. It was understood that he held 
the Turks in contempt; and it was said also that he enter- 
tained a strong dislike of the English. He had not been 
schooled in diplomacy, but he was to be intrusted with the 
power of using a threatening tone, and: was to be supported 
by a fleet held in readiness and by bodies of troops impending 
upon the Turkish frontiers. The Emperor Nicholas seems to 
have thought that harsh words and a display of force might 
be made to supply want of skill. 

_ Great latitude was given to Prince Mentschikoff in regard 
to the means by which he was to attain the objects of his mis- 
sion; but it is certain that the general tenor of his instructions 
sontravened with singular exactness the honorable and gener- 


Cuap. VII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 81 


ous language in which the Emperor Nicholas loved to mark 
out the duty of the great Powers of Europe toward Turkey. 
In the last Secret Memorandum solemnly placed in the hands 
of our Envoy at St. Petersburg as a record of the Emperor's 
determination, Nicholas, as we have seen, had laid it down that 
it was the duty of great Powers not ‘to harass the Porte by 
‘imperious demands put forward in a manner humiliating to 
‘its independence and dignity ;? and yet these very words, 
which so well point out what the Czar said ought not to be 
done, are a close description of that which he ordered his Am- 
bassador to do. 

The approach of Prince Mentschikoff to Constantinople was 
Mentschikoft at heralded by the arrival of staff officers, who were 
Constantinople. ehareed to prepare the way, and cause men to feel 
the import of the coming embassy. For many days rumor 
was busy.. When for some time men’s minds had been kept 
on the rack, it became known that the expected vessel of war 
was nearing the gates of the Bosphorus, and at length, sur- 
rounded with pomp, and supported by the silent menace of 
fleets equipped, and battalions marching on the Danube, Prince 
Mentschikoff entered the palace of the Russian embassy. The 
next day another war-steamer came down, bringing the Vice- 
Admiral Korniloff, the commander of the Black Sea fleet, and 
the Chief of the Staff of the land-forces under General Rudiger, 
with several other officers. All this warlike following went to 
show that the. Ambassador had the control of the military and 
naval forces which were hovering upon the Turkish Empire. 
Then also came tidings that General Dannenburg, commanding 
the cavalry of the 5th corps d’armée, had pushed his advance- 
guard close up to the frontiers of Moldavia; that funds had 
been transmitted to merchants in Moldavia and Wallachia for 
the purchase of rations; and, finally, that. the fleet at Sebasto- 
pol was getting ready to sail at the shortest notice. 

In the midst of the alarm engendered by these tidings, Prince 
Mentschikoff began the duties of his mission; and he so acted 
as to make men see that he was charged to coerce, and not-to 
Panicinthe persuade. With his whole Embassy he went to the 
Ritey Grand Vizier’s apartment at the Porte, but refused 
to obey the custom which imperatively required that he should 
wait upon Fuad Effendi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. 
With him, as it was understood, the Ambassador declined to 
hold intercourse. Fuad Effendi, the immediate object of the 
affront, was the ablest member of the Government. He in- 
stantly resigned his office. The Sultan accepted his resigna- 
tion. There was a panic. It was understood that Prince 

D 2 


82 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. VIL, 


Mentschikoff was going to demand terms deeply humiliating 
and injurious to the Sultan, and that a refusal to give way 
would be followed by an instant attack. The Grand Vizier 
believed that the mission, far from being of a conciliatory char- 
acter, as pretended, was meant, on the contrary, ‘to win some 
‘important right from Turkey, which would destroy her inde- 
‘pendence,’ and that the Czar’s object was ‘to trample under 
‘foot the rights of the Porte, and the independence of the 
‘Sovereign. In short, the Divan was so taken by surprise, 
and so overwhelmed by alarm, as to be in danger of going to 
ruin by the path of concession for the sake of averting a sud- 
den blow. But there remained one hope—the English fleet 
was at Malta; and the Grand Vizier went to Colo: 
nel Rose, who was then in charge of our affairs at 
the Porte, and entreated that he wonld request our Admiral 
at Malta to come up to Vourla, in order to give the Turkish 
Government the support of an approaching fleet. Colonel 
Rose, being a firm, able man, with strength to bear a sudden 
load of responsibility, was not afraid to go beyond the range 
of common duty. He consented to do as he was asked; and 
although he was disavowed by the Government at home, and 
although his appeal to the English Admiral was rejected, it is 
not the less certain that his mere consent to call up the fleet 
allayed the panic which was endangering at that moment the 
very life of the Ottoman Empire. Happily, there was not a 
complete perfect communication by telegraph between London 
and Constantinople, and long before the disavowal reached 
the Bosphorus the Turkish statesmen had recovered their usual 
calm. On the other hand, the Russian Government was much 
soothed by the intelligence that the English Cabinet had de- 
clined to approve Colonel Rose’s request to the Admiral; and 
it might be said with truth that both the act of the Queen’s 
Representative and the disavowal of it by his Government at 
home were of advantage to the public service.? , 
It would seem that in the middle of the month of March the 
The Czar anger of the Emperor Nicholas had grown cool. 
ereaaty He had always felt the difficulty of basing a war 
* upon the question of the Holy Places alone, and the 
language of his Government at this time was moderate and 
-pacific.2 But unhappily there were distinct centres of action 


Colonel Rose, 


* ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 88. 

? Colonel Rose was the officer who afterward became illustrious for hie 
career of victory in India, but at that later time he was known to his grate- 
ful country as Sir Hugh Rose. 

* Lord Cowley’s account of Count Nesselrode’s Dispatch of the 15th March, 
‘ Eastern Papers, part i., p.96 ; 


CaariVits| BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 83 


in Paris, in London, in St. Petersburg, and in Constantinople, 
and it was constantly happening that when the fire seemed to 
be got down in three out of the four capitals, 1t would spring up 
with fresh strength in the fourth. Thus, at a moment when 
the panic of the Divan had entirely ceased, and when the Court 
of St. Petersburg, already inclining toward moderation, was 
about to be farther pacified by the welcome tidings which in- 
formed it of the disavowal of Colonel Rose by the Home Gov- 
ernment, the Emperor of the French suddenly determined to 
send a naval force into the Levant, and, notwithstanding the 
The French Opposition of our Government, the French fleet was © 
fleet suddenly ordered to Salamis, This was done without sound 
ainis. reason, for the panie which had mduced Colonel 
Rose to appeal to the English Admiral at Malta had long ago 
ceased. The step gave deep umbrage to Russia. 

When the Emperor Nicholas learned that the advance of the 
French fleet had been disapproved by England, his anger was 
followed by gladness, and the relations between the Govern- 
ments of St. Petersburg and London then seemed to be upon 
so friendly a footing as to exclude the fear of a disagreement. 
His conceal. Count Nesselrode assured Sir Hamilton Seymour 
pea that Russia was alleging no grievance against the 
Turkish Government except in regard to the question of the 
Holy Places, and even this one remaining subject of complaint 
he began to treat as a slighter matter than it had hitherto ap- 
peared to be. It is hard to have to believe that all this good 
humor of the Court of St. Petersburg was simulated, and yet 
the assurances of Count Nesselrode distinctly went to exclude 
the belief that Russia could ever do that which she was actu- 
ally doing. . Yielding it would seem to an instinct of wild cun- 
ning, the Czar failed to understand that the chance of carrying 
a point at Constantinople by a diplomatic surprise could never 
be of such worth as to deserve to be set against his old repu-- 
tation for truthfulness. If he thought at all, he would see that 
the difference between what he was saying and what he was 
doing would be laid bare in three weeks. Yet he gave way 
to the strange impulse which forced him to go and try to steal 
a trophy for his Church. He concealed from the French as 
well as from our Governmentsall knowledge of his intention 
to endeavor to extort from the Sultan an engagement giving 
to Russia the protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey. 
The Cabinets of the Western Powers were suffered to gather 
the first tidings of this scheme from their Constantinople dis- 
patches, and the trust which the English Government had hith- 
erto placed in the honor and good faith of the Emperor Nicho- 
las was suddenly and forever destroyed. 


. 84 TRANSACTIONS WHICH . . [Cuar. VIE, 


Meanwhile Prince Mentschikoff brought: forward the claims 
Mentschikott's Of the Greek Church in regard to the Holy Places; 
emande. but he seemed disposed to be moderate in his de- 
mands respecting the shrines, if the Turkish Government 
should show any willingness to give way to him in regard to 
the other and more important object which he was to endeay- 
or to compass. Striving to take advantage of the alarm cre- 
ated by his Embassy, he proposed to wring from the Porte a 
treaty engagement, conceding to the Emperor of Russia a pro- 
tectorate over the Greek Church in Turkey. At first he spoke 
darkly, intimating that he had some great demand to press upon 
the Sultan, but not yet choosing to say what the demand might 
be. Then he began to say to the Turkish Ministers that if 
they would appease the anger of the Czar, and deliver their 
State from danger, it would be well for them at once to turn 
away from France and England, trust themselves wholly to the 
generosity of the Emperor of Russia, and begin by giving a 
solemn assurance that they would withhold from the repre- 
sentatives of the Western Powers all knowledge of the nego- 
tiation they were required to undertake. ‘We are aw are;’ 
said the Grand Vizier, ‘that the object of his (Prince Mentschi- 
‘koff’s) mission is to make a secret treaty of alliance with us. 
‘He bas not demanded it officially, but he has told some per- 
‘sons in his confidence, who (he knows) are in communication 
‘with us, that we do wrong to rely on the English and French 
‘Governments, for experience should at length have proved to 
‘us that we have lost much and gained nothing by following 
‘their policy and advice. By this language he seeks to gain 
‘their support and to insure their concurrence in the work of 
‘the secret treaty which he is seeking to conclude. His policy 
‘is most confused. At one time he would attract us to Russia 
‘by mildness, spreading abroad a report that the intentions of 
‘his Government are pacific. At another time he seeks to gain 
‘us over by pointing out the disadvantages and inutility of our 
‘reliance upon England and France, and how wrong we are in 
‘following the advice of those two Powers, to whom we ought 
‘not to be attached, especially if we consider that the nature 
‘of their Constitution differs from that of ours, which, on the 
‘contrary, resembles that of Russia and Austria. Prince Ments- 

‘chikoff had a conference with Rifaat Pasha two days ago. 
‘He told him that before communicating to the Sublime Porte 
‘the nature of his mission, and the demands of his Government, 
‘and before giving any explanation, he required from Rifaat 
‘Pasha the formal promise of the Porte, that it would not com- 
‘municate to the representative either of England or of France 


Cuap. VII.) BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 85 


‘any thing whatever as to what he demanded or proposed; 
‘that it was his wish that it should be treated with the great- 
‘est secrecy, otherwise he would not enter upon the subject.’! 

The Grand Vizier declared that the Turkish Government 
had at once refused to withhold from the Western Powers a 
knowledge of the impending negotiation, but it seems likely 
that some alarmed member of the Turkish Government may 
have been led to give the required promise of secrecy, for be- 
fore the end of March Prince Mentschikoff vouchsafed to dis- 
close the offers and the demands of his Sovereign. He ver- 
bally expressed the Emperor’s wish to enter into a secret treaty 
with Turkey, putting a fleet and 400,000 men at her disposal, 
if she ever needed aid against any Western Power. As ‘the 
‘equivalent for this proffered aid,’ said the Grand Vizier, ‘ Rus- 
‘sia farther secretly demanded an addition to the treaty of 
‘Kainardji, whereby the Greek Church should be placed en- 
‘tirely under Russian protection without reference to Turkey. 
‘ Prince Mentschikoff had stated that the greatest. secrecy must 
‘be maintained relative to this proposition, and that, should 
‘Turkey allow it to be made known to England, he and his 
‘mission would instantly quit Constantinople.’ 

This kind of pressure upon the Turkish Government was 
perhaps well fitted for the days of alarm which immediately 
followed Prince Mentschikoff’s arrival at Constantinople ; but 
it was now the end of March, and it was so long ago as the 6th . 
of the month that Colonel Rose, by requesting the English Ad- 
miral to come into the Levant, had been able to stop the panic. 
Rifaat Pasha, the Minister who had succeeded to Fuad Effendi 
in the Department of Foreign Affairs, was firm. ‘Iam nota 
‘child,’ said he, in his message to Colonel Rose; ‘I am an old 
‘Minister, very well acquainted with the treaties which unite 
‘the Sublime Porte with the friendly Powers, and I understand, 
‘God be praised, too well the importance of our good relations 
‘with England and France, the full weight of the obligation to 
‘maintain treaties, the whole extent of the evil which would 
‘result to my Government if it departs from or infringes them, 
‘to hesitate a single instant to inform their respective repre- 
‘sentatives of every demand or proposal which Russia might 
‘be desirous of enforcing upon us, and which might not be in 
‘faccordance with the rights recorded in those treaties.’9 

Finding himself thus encountered, and being unskilled in 
negotiation, Prince Mentschikoff had already begun to draw 
to himself the support of an army. The English Vice-Consul 


1 * astern Papers,’ parti., p.111.  ? Ibid.,p.112.  * Ibid., p. 114. 


86 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ; [Cuap. VIII. 


at Galatz reported that preparations had been made in Bessa- 
rabia for the passage of 120,000 men, and that battalions were 
marching to the South from all directions. Though the time 
of mere panic was past, there was ‘anxiety and alarm’ in the 
Divan.! 

But Prince Mentschikoff was destined soon to learn that 
there was a power in the world which could exert more goy- 
ernance over Turkish Statesmen than the march of the Czar’s 
battalions. Before the week was past he had to undergo the 
sensation of encountering a formidable mind. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


WHEN a great country is induced by virtue or by policy to 
Foreign ‘influ. refrain from using her physical strength against 
ae the Sovereign of a weaker State, she often solaces 
herself for this painful effort of moderation by showing her 
neighbor the error of his ways and giving him constant ad- 
vice; and if it happen that two or more great Powers are thus 
engaged in tendering their rival counsels to the same State, 
they will be prone to struggle with one another for the as- 
cendency, and to do this with a zeal scarcely intelligible to men 
who have never seen that kind of strife. The prize contended 
for is commonly known by the name of ‘influence ;’ and al- 
though this moral sovereignty over foreign States may be a 
privilege of small intrinsic worth, the Princes and Statesmen 
who have once begun combating for the prize, and even the 
merchants and the travelers who have happened to be on the 
spot and to witness with any attention the animating incidents 
of the conflict, have generally had their zeal kindled. Now 
Grounds for the Ottoman polity is of such a nature as almost to 
jovcisn inter- court this kind of interference. The practice of 
key. . suffering the Christian Churches to live and thrive 
separate and apart, without being subjected to any attempt at 
amalgamation, has given to these communities so many of the 
privileges of distinct national existence that they long to make 
their independence still more complete,.and to do this—not by 
attempting to lay their timid hands upon the government, but 
rather by becoming more and more separate, and at last drop- 
ping off from the Empire.» Therefore, instead of harboring 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 124. 


Cuap. VIIL.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 87 


schemes for rising in arms against the Sultan, they have accus- 
tomed themselves to seek to form ties of a political and relig- 
ious kind with foreign States, and to appeal to them for pro- 
tection against their Ottoman rulers. Here then, of course, a 
gaping cleft was open to receive the wedge which diplomatists 
call a ‘ Protectorate.’ Russia claimed a moral right to pro- 
tect the ten or fourteen millions of Turkish subjects who con- 
stituted the Greek Church, and she availed herself of some 
loose words which had crept into the old treaty of Kainardji 
as a ground for maintaining that this moral claim was convert: 
ed into a distinct right by treaty engagement. Austria, arm- 
ed with treaties, was empowered to protect the Roman Cath- 
olic worship, but France had always been accustomed to busy 
herself in watching over that portion of the Latin Church 
which was connected with Palestine and Syria. It is true that 
the Armenian, the Coptic, and the Black Churches were with- 
out any recognized foreign patron, and flourished quite as well 
as their protected brethren, but the numbers composing these 
Churches were scanty in comparison with the worshipers fol- 
lowing the Greek ritual, and it may be said that the bulk of 
the Christian population of Turkey had contracted the habit 
of looking abroad for support. 

Again, the Turkish Government was always so sensible of 
the distinctness of the ‘nations’ held under its sway, and of 
the hardship of keeping Christians under the close subjection 
of the Moslem system, that even in the times when the Sultans 
were.in the pride of their strength, they generously allowed 
humble foreigners, though living in Turkey, to have the pro- 
tection of their country’s flag, and to enjoy immunities which 
(except in the case of Sovereigns and their embassies) the Gov- 
ernments of Christian countries have never been accustomed 
to give to any of their foreign guests. These privileges had 
been granted to the principal States of Europe by treaty en- 
gagements which went by the name of ‘capitulations,’ and 
they were so extensive that, except in regard to one or two 
specified descriptions of crime and outrage, a foreigner in Tur- 
key who was a native of any of the States to whom these ca- 
pitulations had been granted, was exempt from the laws of the 
country in which he dwelt. And these privileges were not 
even confined to foreigners, for Ambassadors at the Porte 
claimed and exercised a right of withdrawing a Turkish sub- 
ject from the laws of his country by taking him into their 
‘service, or even by a mere written grant of protection; and 
the streets of Pera and Galata were filled with Orientals of 
various races who had contrived to be turned into ‘ Russians,’ 


88. TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. VIII. 


or ‘Frenchmen,’ or ‘Englishmen.’ Thus it resulted that not 
only the great communities forming Churches or‘ nations,’ but 
also a great number of individuals, often clever, stirring, and 
unscrupulous men, were always laboring to attract the inter- 
ference of some great Power, furnishing it with ready grounds 
of dispute, and stimulating its desire for preponderance. But 
there was a broad difference between the protectorate of Rus- 
sia and that of the other States of Europe; for whilst the Ro- 
man Catholic States could only reckon a few hundred thou- 
sands of clients, and whilst the Protestant subjects of the Porte 
were too few to form a body in the State, the number of Greek 
Christians who looked to Russia for protection amounted to 
from ten to fourteen millions. This fact gave great strength 
and substance to the pretensions of Russia, but on the other 
hand it made her interference in a high degree dangerous, for 
it was clear that if the guardianship of so vast a number of the 
Rayahs or Turkish subjects were to be suffered to lapse into 
the hands of a foreign Sovereign, the empire of the Sultans 
would pass away. All the great Powers of Europe were ac- 
customed to press upon the Sultan the duty of conferring upon 
his people, and especially upon his Christian subjects, the bless- 
ing of good and equal government, but Russia urged these de- 
mands with the not unnatural desire to prepare for herself a 
firm standing-ground in the midst of her neighbor’s territory, 
whilst Austria and England, being interested in averting the 
dismemberment of the Sultan’s dominions, gave their counsel 
with a real view to make the Sultan do what they deemed to 
be for his own good. 

For ascendency on this the favorite arena of diplomacy two 
Rivalry be- men had long contended. They were altogether 
tween Nicholas unequal-in station, and yet were not ill matched. 
ford Canning. The first of the combatants was the Emperor Nich- 
Sir Stratford Olas: the other was Sir Stratford Canning. This 
Pane: kinsman of Mr. Canning the Minister had been bred 
from early life to the career of diplomacy, and whilst he was 
so young that he could still perhaps think in smooth Eton Al- 
caics more easily than in the diction of ‘ High Contracting 
Parties, it was given him to negotiate a treaty which helped 
to bring ruin upon the enemy of his country.! How to nego- 
tiate with a perfected skill never degenerating into craft, how 
to form such a scheme of policy that his country might be 


* The Treaty of. Bucharest in 1812. By enabling the Czar to with- 
draw from the South. the forces commanded by Tchitchagoff, this treaty 
did much to convert the discomfiture of Napoleon’s ‘ grand army’ into ab- 
solute ruin. 


Cuap. VIII. ] “BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 89 


brought to adopt it without swerving, and how to pursue this 
always, promoting it steadily abroad, and gradually forcing the 
home Government to go all lengths in its support, this he knew; 
and he was moreover so gifted by nature that, whether men 
studied his dispatches, or whether they listened to his spoken 
words, or whether they were only by-standers caught and fas- 
cinated by the grace of his presence, they could scarcely help 
thinking that if the English nation was to be maintained in 
peace or drawn into war by the will of a single mortal, there 
was no man who looked so worthy to fix its destiny as Sir 
Stratford Canning. He had faults which made him an imper- 
fect Christian, for his temper was fierce, and his assertion of 
self was so closely involved in his conflicts that he followed 
up his opinions with his feelings and with the whole strength 
of his imperious nature. But his fierce temper, being always 
under control when purposes of State so required, was far from 
being an infirmity and was rather a weapon of exceeding sharp- 
ness, for it was so wielded by him as to have more tendency to 
cause dread and surrender than to generate resistance. Then, 
too, every judgment which he pronounced was enfolded in 
words so complete as to exclude the idea that it could ever 
be varied, and to convey therefore the idea of duration. As 
though yielding to fate itself, the Turkish mind used to bend 
and fall down before him. 

But the counsels which Sir Stratford Canning had been ac- 
customed to tender to the Sultan’s Ministers, however whole- 
some they might be, were often very irksome to hear, and very 
difficult to adopt. Indeed it might be questioned whether his 
Turkish policy could be made to consist with the principle on 
which the Ottoman system was based. He sought to make 
the Ottoman rule seem tolerable to Christendom by getting 
rid of the differences which separated the Christian subjects 
of the Porte from their Mahometan fellow-subjects, and _plac- 
ing the tributaries on a footing with their masters. But the 
theory of Mahometan government rests upon the mainte- 
nance of a clear separation from the unbelievers, and to pro- 
pose to a Mussulman of any piety that the Commander of the 
Faithful should obliterate the distinction between Mahomet- 
ans and Christians would be proposing to obliterate the dis- 
tinction between virtue and vice; the notion would seem to be 
not merely wrong and wicked, but a contradiction in terms. 
A virtuous Osmanlee would feel that if he were to consent to 
this leveling of the barriers between good and evil, he would 
lose the whole merit and comfort of being a Turk. Perhaps 
the opposite policy, namely, that of widening the separation of 


90 TRANSACTIONS WHICH * {[Cuap. VIII, 


the Christians, and giving them (under a tenure less precarious 
than the present one) the character of tributary municipalities, 
would be more consonant with the scheme of a Mussulman 
Empire, and therefore more susceptible of complete execution. 
But, whether the reforms thus counseled were possible or not, 
it was hard to resist the imperious Ambassador to his face. 
If what he directed was inconsistent with the nature of things, 
then possibly the nature of things would be changed by the 
decree of Heaven, for there was no hope that the great Eltchi 
would relax his will. In the mean time, however, and by the 
blessing of God, the actual execution of the Ambassador’s pain- 
ful mandates might perhaps be suffered to encounter a little 
delay. So thought, so temporized the wise tranquil statesmen 
at the Porte. 

Of course this kind of ascendency was often very galling 
to the Sultan’s advisers. They knew that the English Am- 
bassador was counseling them for the good of their country; 
but they felt that he humbled them by making his dictation 
too plainly apparent, and they were often very conscious that 
the motive which made them succumb to him was dread. Yet, 
if the Ambassador was unrelenting, and even harsh in the ex- 
ercise of his dominion over the Turks, he was faithful to guard 
them against enemies from abroad. He chastened them him- 
self, but he was dangerous to any other man who came seek- 
ing to hurt his children. 

Now it happened that this was exactly the kind of ascend- 
ency over the Turks for which the Emperor Nicholas had long 
been craving. Some men imagine that the Emperor’s designs 
in regard to Turkey were steadily governed by sheer desire 
for his neighbor’s land; and they are not without specious 
materials for forming such an opinion; but perhaps a full 
knowledge of the truth would justify the belief that, from the 
Peace of Adrianople in 1829, down to the time of his death, 
the Czar would have pr eferred the ascendency which Sir Strat- 
ford Canning enjoyed at Constantinople to any scheme of con- 
quest. And, what is more, if Nicholas had succeeded in gain- 
ing this ascendency, he would have been inclined to use it as 
a means of enforcing counsels somewhat similar to those which 
were pressed upon the Sultan by the English Ambassador; 
for, though his first eare would have been always for his own 
Church, it would have suited his pride and his policy to extend 
his protection to all the Christian subjects of the Porte. But, 
just as similarity of doctrine often embitters the differences 
between contending sects, so the very resemblance between 
his and Sir Stratford Canning’s views with regard to the Chris- 


Cuap. VIII. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 91 


tian subjects of the Porte, made it the more intolerable to him 
to see that he, the powerful neighbor of Turkey who was able 
to hover over her frontiers and her shores with great armies 
and fleets, could never make an effort to force his counsels on 
the Porte without finding himself baffled or forestalled by the 
stronger mind. 

Kyen in his very early life, it had been the fate of Sir Strat- 
ford Canning to have to resist and thwart the Russian Govern- 
ment; and during a great part of the years of his embassy at 
Constantinople he had been more or less in a posture of resist- 
ance to the Emperor Nicholas. Moreover, the feeling with 
which the Emperor carried on this long-standing conflict was 
quickened by personal animosity, and by a knowledge that 
diplomacy was watching the strife with interest and amuse- 
ment; for he had once gone the length of declining to receive 
Sir Stratford Canning as the English Ambassador at St. Peters- 
burg, and had thus marked him out before Europe as his rec- 
ognized antagonist. The struggle had lasted for a long time, 
and with varying success; for many a Turkish ministry owed 
its frail existence and its untimely end to the chances of the 
combat going on between the Czar and the English Ambassa- 
dor. The Turks could not help knowing that the counsels of 
the Ambassador were for their own good; and they had rea- 
son to surmise that the advice of the Emperor might spring 
from opposite motives; but there are times when the smooth 
speech and the wily promises of a political foe are more wel- 
come than the painful lectures of an honest friend; and again, 
though it was hard to bear up with mere words against the 
personal ascendant of the Ambassador, the Emperor had the 
power of throwing the sword into the scale at any moment. 
The strife, therefore, had not been altogether unequal; but, 
upon the ‘whole, Sir Stratford Canning “had kept the upper 
hand, and the Czar had been forced to endure the agony of 
being what his representative called ‘secondary,’ so long as 
Sir Stratford Canning was in the palace of the English em- 
bassy. 

For almost two years Sir Stratford Canning had been ab- 
Lord Stratford sent from Constantinople; but now, ‘at a timie when 
instructed to Europe had fastened its eyes upon the Czar, and 
stantinople. was watching to see how the Ambassador of All 
the Russias would impose his master’s will upon Turkey, the 
Emperor Nicholas was obliged to hear that his eternal foe, 
traveling by the ominous route of Paris and Vienna, was slowly 
returning to his embassy at the Porte. 

It was on the 25th of February, 1853, that Lord Stratford 


99 TRANSACTIONS WHICH | [Cuap. VIIL 


Hisinstruc. Ge Redcliffe! was instructed to return to his former 
fore. post. The measure was not without significance. 
Read by foreigners, it imported that England clung to her 
ancient policy, and was proceeding to maintain it; and al- 
though the instructions addressed to Lord Stratford disclosed 
no knowledge of the spirit in which Prince Mentschikoff was 
about to conduct his embassy, or of the kind of proposals 
which he was about to press upon the Porte, they indicated 
that the Cabinet was alarmed for the fate of Turkey. 

The dispatch which supplied Lord Stratford with his instr ue- 
tions, announced to him that, in the then critical period of the 
fate of the Ottoman Empire, he was to return to his Embassy 
at Constantinople for a special purpose. Then, after recording 
once more the fact that the duty of maintaining the integrity 
and independence of the Ottoman Empire was a principle sol- 
emnly declared and acknowledged by all the great Powers of 
Kurope, the dispatch informed ‘Lord Stratford that it was his 
mission to counsel prudence to the Porte, and forbearance to 
those Powers who were urging complhance with their de- 
mands. In Paris, he was to remind the French Government 
that the interests of France and England in the East were 
identical, and was to explain the fatal embarrassment to which 
the Sultan might be exposed if unduly pressed by France upon 
a question of such vital importance to the Power from which 
Turkey had most to apprehend. At Vienna, he was to give 
and elicit fresh declarations of the conservative views enter- 
tained by the two Governments.. Then proceeding to Con- 
stantinople, the Ambassador was to inform the Sultan that his 
Embassy was to be regarded as a mark of Her Majesty’s 
friendly feelings toward His Highness, but also as indicating 
the opinion which Her Majesty entertained of the gravity of 
the circumstances in which there was reason to fear the Otto- 
man Empire was placed. In regard to any part which he 
might be able to take in conducing to a settlement of the ques- 
tion of the Holy Places, the discretion of the Ambassador was 
left unfettered. The Ambassador was directed to warn the 
Porte that the Ottoman Empire was in ‘a position of peculiar 
‘danger. The accumulated grievances of foreign nations,’ con- 
tinued Lord Clarendon, ‘ which the Porte is unable or unwill- 
‘ing to redress; the mal-administration of its own affairs, and 
‘the increasing weakness of executive power in Turkey, have 
‘caused the allies of the Porte latterly to assume a tone alike 
‘novel and alarming; and which, if persevered in, may lead to a 

1 Sir Stratford Canning was created Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe in 
1852. 


Cuar. VIII. BROUGHT ON THE WAR. | 93 


; ‘general revolt among the Christian subjects of the Porte, and 
eprone fatal to the independence and integrity of the Empire 
‘a, catastrophe that would be deeply deplored by Her Maj- 

‘esty’s Government, but which it is their duty to represent to 
‘the Porte is considered probable and impending by some of 
‘the great European Powers. Your Excellency will explain 
‘to the Sultan that it is with the object of pointing out these 
‘dangers, and with the hope of averting them, that Her Maj- 
“esty’s Government have now directed you to proceed to Con- 
‘stantinople. You will endeavor to convince the Sultan and 
‘his Ministers that the crisis is one which requires the utmost 
‘prudence on their part, and confidence in the sincerity and 
‘soundness of the advice they will receive from you, to resolve 
‘it favorably for their future peace and independence.’ Then 
(and probably at the suggestion of Lord Stratford himself) 
the Ambassador was to press upon the Porte the adoption of 
the reforms which his intimate knowledge of the affairs of Tur- 
key enabled him to recommend ; and then—disclosing the ef- 
fect. already produced upon the mind of the Government by 
the challenge to which our accustomed policy in the East had 
just been subjected by the press—the dispatch went on: ‘ Nor 
‘will you disguise from the Sultan and his Ministers, that per- 
“severance in his present course must end in alienating the 
‘sympathies of the British nation, and making it impossible for 
‘Her Majesty’s Government to shelter them from the impend- 
‘ing danger, or to overlook the exigencies of Christendom, ex- 
‘posed to the natural consequences of their unwise policy and 
‘reckless mal-administration.’. Finally the Ambassador was 
told that, in the event of imminent danger to the existence of 
the Turkish Gover nment, he was to dispatch a messenger at 
once to Malta, requesting the Admiral to hold himself in read- 
iness ;. but Lord Stratford was not to direct him to approach 
the Dardanelles without positive instructions from the Govern- 
ment at home. 

Thus, so far as concerned the power of turning for aid to 
physical force, the Ambassador went out poorly ‘armed ; but 
he was destined to have an opportunity of showing that a ‘slen- 
der authority in the hands of a skilled diplomatist may be more 
formidable than the absolute control of great armaments in- 
trusted to a less able Statesman. Lord Stratford was licensed 
to do no. more than send a. message to an Admiral, advising 
him to be ready to go to sea; and, slight as this power was, 
he never exhausted.it; yet, as will be seen, he so wielded the 
instruction which intrusted it to him as to be able to establish 
a great calm in the Divan at a moment when Prince Ments- 


94 . TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IX.) 


chikoff was violently pressing upon its fears, with a fleet await- 
ing his orders, and an army of 140,000 men. 


CHAPTER IX. 


On the morning of the 5th of April, 1853, the Sultan and all 
Lord Strat- his Ministers learned that a vessel of war was com- 
ford’s return. jno@ up the Propontis, and they knew who it was 
that was on board. Long before noon the voyage and the 
turmoil of the reception were over, and, except that a frigate 
under the English flag lay at anchor in the Golden Horn, there 
was no seeming change in the outward world. Yet all was 
changed. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had entered once more 
the palace of the English Embassy. The event spread a sense 
of safety, but also a sense of awe. It seemed to bring with it 
confusion to the enemies of Turkey, but austere reproof for 
past errors at home, and punishment where punishment was 
due, and an enforcement of hard toils and painful sacrifices of 
many kinds, and a long farewell to repose. It was the angry 
return of a king whose realm had been suffered to fall into 
danger. Before a day was over, the Grand Vizier and the 
Reis Effendi had begun to speak, and to tell a part of what 
they knew to the English Ambassador. They did not yet 
venture to tell all. Things which they had told to Colonel 
Rose they did not yet dare to tell to the great Eltchi. They 
did not perhaps mean to conceal from him, but they shrank 
from the terror of seeing his anger when he came to know of 
Prince Mentschikoff’s demands for a Protectorate of the Greek 
Church. If they were to confess that they had borne to hear 
such a proposal, the Eltchi might think that they had dared to 
listen to it. Lord Stratford, observing their fear, imagined 
that it was Prince Mentschikoff whe had disturbed their equa- 
nimity. ‘This combination,’ said he, ‘ of alarm, seeking for ad- 
‘vice, and of reluctance to intrust me frankly with the whole 
‘case, is attributable to the threatening language of Prince 
‘ Mentschikoff, and to the character of his proposals.’ But his 
view of the cause of this tendency toward suppression is dis- 
placed by observing the frankness of the disclosures which the 
Turkish Ministers had long before made to Colonel Rose ;' the 
truth is, that Lord Stratford was unconscious of exercising the 


1 «Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 107 et seq. 


Cuap. 1X. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 95 


ascendency which he did, and, imagining that men gave way 
to him because he was in the right, he never came to under- 
stand the awe which he inspired. However, by degrees the 
Turkish Ministers went so far as to tell him that ‘since the ar- 
‘rival of Prince Mentschikoff, the language held by the Rus- 
‘sian Embassy to them had been a mixture of angry com- 
‘plaints and friendly assurances, accompanied with positive 
‘requisitions as to the Holy Places in Palestine, indications of 
‘some ulterior views, and a general tone of insistance border- 
‘ing at times on intimidation”! They declared that as to 
what the ulterior views were, ‘ there was still some uncertain- 
‘ty in the language of Prince Mentschikoff. In the beginning 
‘he had sounded the sentiments of the Porte as to a defensive 
‘ alliance with Russia, but, receiving no encouragement, had de- 
‘sisted from the overture. His intentions were now rather 
‘directed to a remodeling of the Greek Patriarchate of Con- 
‘stantinople, to a more clear and comprehensive definition of 
‘Russian right under treaty to protect the Greek and Arme- 
‘nian subjects of the Porte in ‘religious matters, and to the 
‘conclusion of a formal agreement comprising those points.’ 
Then, eager to place themselves under Lord Stratford’s guid- 
ance, but still shrinking from a disclosure of the whole truth, 
the Turkish Ministers entreated the Ambassador to tell them 
how to meet the demands which, although they only spoke of 
them hypothetically, had been already made by Prince Ments- 
chikoff. 

Lord Stratford instantly saw that he must cause the ques- 
His plan of re- tion of the Holy Places to be kept clear of all the 
Mesnciikors Other subjects of discussion which Prince Mentschi- 
demands. koff might be intending to raise, for it was plain 
that the vacillation of the Porte in regard to the sanctuaries 
(though it had sprung from a desire to avoid giving offense to 
either of two great Powers) had.given Russia fair grounds of 
complaint on that subject; but the Czar had nothing else to 
complain of, and it was clear therefore that, if the one griev- 
ance which really existed could be settled, every hostile step 
which Russia might afterward take would place her more and 
more inthe wrong. ‘ Endeavor,’ said Lord Stratford, in charg- 
ing the Turkish Ministers, ‘to keep the affair of the Holy 
‘Places separate from the ulterior proposals (whatever they 
‘may be) of Russia. The course which you appear to have 
‘taken under the former head was probably the best, and I am 
‘ glad to find that there is a fair prospect of its success. When- 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 125. 


96 TRANSACTIONS WHICH — [Cnap. IX, 


‘ever Prince Mentschikoff comes forward with farther propo- 
‘sitions, you are at perfect liberty to decline entering into ne- 
‘ gotiation without a full statement of their nature, extent, and 
‘reasons. Should they be found, on examination, to carry with 
‘them that degree of influence over the Christian subjects of 
‘the Porte in favor of a foreign Power which might eventual- 
‘ly prove dangerous or seriously inconvenient to the exercise 
‘of the Sultan’s legitimate authority, His Majesty’s Ministers 
‘can not be doing wrong in declining them.’! But then add- 
ed the Ambassador—and his words portended some counsels 
hard to follow—this ‘ will not prevent the removal, by direct 
‘sovereign authority, of any existing abuse.”! 

Gradually the Turkish Ministers told more, and on the 9th 
of April Lord Stratford knew that Russia was demanding a 
treaty engagement, giving her the protectorate of the Greek 
Church in Turkey; and being now in communication with 
Prince Mentschikoff, he succeeded, as he believed, in penetrat- 
ing the real object which Russia had in view. ‘That object,’ 
he said,‘ was to reinstate Russian influence in Turkey on an 
‘exclusive basis, and in.a commanding and stringent form.’ 
In other words, Prince Mentschikoff, with horse, and foot, and 
artillery, and the whole Sebastopol fleet at his back, was come 
to depose the man whom they called in St. Petersburg ‘the 
English Sultan. On the other hand, Lord Stratford was not 
willing to be deposed. The struggle began. 

The severance of the question of the Holy Places from the 
Commence. ulterior demands of the Czar was not an object to 
ment of the be pursued for the sake of order and convenience 


struggle be- . A : 
tween Prince only. On the contrary, it bid fair to govern the re- 


er sult of the diplomatic conflict; for, the Montenegro 
Stratford. question having disappeared, and Russia having 
committed herself to the avowal that she had no complaints 
against the Sultan except in regard to the Holy Places, a set- 
tlement of that solitary grievance would leave the ulterior de- 
mand:so baseless that any attempt to enforce it by arms would 
be a naked outrage upon the opinion of Europe. If Prince 
Mentschikoff had been a man accustomed to negotiate, he 
would have taken care to preserve the question of the Holy 
Places, and keep it blended with the ulterior demand until he 
saw his way to a successful issue, for he was in the position of 
having to found two demands upon one grievance, and it was 
clear, therefore, that he would be stranded if he allowed his one 
grievance to be disposed of without having good reason for 


1 «Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 125. 


Cuar. IX.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 97 


knowing that his farther demand would be granted; but he | 
was vain and confident, and perhaps his sagacity was blunted 
by the thought that he was able to threaten an appeal to force. 
Moreover, Prince Mentschikoff was in the hands of a practiced 
adversary. 

Lord Stratford, knowing the full import of the decision to- 
ward which he was leading his opponent, did not fail to deal 
with him tenderly; and for several days the Prince had the 
satisfaction of imagining that the imperious and overbearing 
Englishman of w hom they were always talking at St. Peters. 
burg was become very gentle in his presence. The two Am- 
bassadors, without being yet in negotiation, began to talk with 
one another of the matters which were bringing the peace of 
the world into danger. They spoke of the Holy Places. Far 
from seeming to be hard or scornful in regard to that matter, 
Lord Stratford was full of deference to a cause which, whether 
it were founded on error or on truth, was still the honest heart’s 
desire of fifty millions of pious men. He showed by his lJan- 
guage that if by chance he should be called upon to use his 
good offices in this matter, or to mediate between Russia and 
France, he would form his judgment with gravity and with 
care. Where he could do so with justice, he admitted the 
fairness of the Russian claims. 

Prince Mentschikoff’s tone became ‘ considerably softened.”! 
Then the Ambassadors ventured upon the subject still more 
pregnant with danger, for Lord Stratford now disclosed his 
knowledge of Prince Mentschikoff’s ‘ ulterior propositions rela- 
‘tive to the protectorate of the whole Greek Church and the 

‘priesthood in Turkey, and his conviction that they would meet 
‘with serious opposition from the Porte, and be regarded with 
‘little favor by Powers even the most friendly to Russia.” 
Prince Mentschikoff tried to ‘attenuate the extent and effect’s 
of his demands; and, on the other hand, Lord Stratford drew 
a clear line of ‘ distinction between the confirmation of special 
‘points already stipulated by treaty, and an extension of influ- 
‘ence having the virtual force of a protectorate, to be exercised 
‘exclusively by a single foreign Power, over the most agi 
‘ant and numerous class of the Sultan’s tr ibutary subjects ;’ 
but, by common consent, the two Ambassadors ‘ avoided enter- 
‘ing into a discussion which might have proved irritating upon 
‘this question.’? Prince Mentschikoff, however, committed the 
diplomatic error of intimating ‘ that, notwithstanding the great 
‘importance attached to it by his Government, there was no 


1 ‘Wastern Papers,’ parti., p. 134. * Ibid., p. 151. * Ibid., p. 139. 
Vou.I—E. 


98 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. IX. 


‘danger of any hostile aggression as the result of its failure, 
“put i at most an estrangement between the two Courts, and 
‘perhaps, though it was not so said, an interruption of diplo- 
‘matic relations.”! 

That, in these circumstances, and until he had lec in 
separating the question of the Holy Places, it was right for the 
Enelish Ambassador to deal very temperately with the ulte- 
rior demands of the Czar, no diplomatist would doubt; and 
Lord Stratford acknowledges? that he carefully refrained ‘from 
discussing the subject in a way tending to irritate, but the 
Vussians imagine that he did more than abstain. ‘They say 
that having been supplied with a copy of Prince Mentschikoff’s 
dratt of the convention embodying his demands in respect to 
the Greek Church and clergy, Lord Stratford struck out as in- 
adinissible the clauses relating to the Greek Patriarch’s tenure 
of office, and, sending back the draft with that and with no 
other alteration, induced the Turkish Ministers (and through 
them induced the Russian Embassy) to suppose that he enter- 
tained no objection to the proposed convention except that 
which he had indicated by his erasure; and that Prince Ments- 
chikoff being in this belief, and being prepared to give way 
upon the question of the Greek Patriarch, had a right to ex- 
pect Lord Stratford’s acquiescence in that dangerous part of 
the Czar’s demand which sought to establish a Protectorate 
over the Greek Church in Turkey. Nothing is more likely 
than that, in the process of endeavoring to penetrate Lord Strat- 
ford’s intentions through the medium of the Turkish Ministers, 
Prince Mentschikoff may have received a wrong impression, 
and it is very likely that Lord Stratford, in reading the draft, 
may have at once struck out clauses which he regarded as to- 
tally inadmissible, reserving for separate discussion and for oral 
explanation the consideration of an ambiguous clause which, 
dangerous as it was, might easily be so altered as to become 
entirely harmless; but it 1s certain that there was never a mo- 
ment in which Lord Stratford was willing or even would have 
endured that any Protectorate over the Greek Church in Tur- 
key should be ceded to Russia,? and no one versed in the spirit 
of English diplomacy, or having a just conception of Lord Strat- 
ford’s nature, will be able to accept the belief that the Queen’s 
Ambassador intended to overreach his antagonist by any mis- 
leading contrivance. 

But, whatever may have been the clew which led him into 
the wrong path, Prince Mentschikoff failed to see the danger 
} ‘Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 139. * Tbid., p. 184. 

* See Lord Stratford’s Dispatches, ib., p.127 et seg. to p. 151. 


Cuap, TX.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. | 99 


in which he would place the success of his negotiation if he* 
consented to let the question of the Holy Places be treated 
separately ; and the angry dispatches which now came in from 
St. Petersburg! did not tend to divert him from his error. On 
the contrary, they tended to place him in hostility with France 
more distinctly than before; and since the question of the Holy 
Places was the one in which France and Russia were face to 
face, the Czar’s Ambassador was not perhaps unwilling to en- 
ter upon a course which would place him for the time in dis-_ 
tinct antagonism with France, and with France alone. He 
agreed to allow the question of the Holy Places to be treated 
first and apart from his other demands. 

It must be acknowledged that so far as concerned the ques- 
tion of the Holy Places, the demands made by Russia were 
moderate. Notwithstanding all the heat of his sectarian zeal, 
the Emperor Nicholas had seen that to endeavor to enforce a 
withdrawal of the privileges which had been granted with 
public solemnity to the Latin Church would be to outrage 
Catholic Europe, and it may be believed too that his religious 
feeling made him unwilling to exclude the people of other 
creeds from those Holy Sites which, according to the teaching 
of his own Church, it was good for Christians to embrace. 
But, if the demands of the Russian Emperor in regard to the 
Holy Places were fair and moderate, he was resolved to be 
peremptory in enforcing them. And it seemed to him that in 
this matter he could not fail to have the ascendant, for his 
forces were near at hand. Also he had good right to suppose 
that France would be isolated, for it was not to be believed 
that England or any other Power would take a part or even 
acknowledge the slightest interest in a question between two 
sorts of monks. 

- On the other hand, the violent language of M. de Lavalette, 
his threats, the persistence of the French Government, and the 
advance of the Toulon fleet to the Bay of Salamis, all these 
signs seemed to exclude the expectation that the French Gov- 
ernment would easily give way. Here was an error. Zealous 
_ himself, the Russiam Ambassador imagined a zeal in the Gov- 
ernment and the Church to which he was opposing himself, 
and fancied that he saw in the French Ambassador’s ‘ resist- 
cance a proof of the encroaching spirit of that Church which 

opr oclaims itself universal, and looked for its real cause in the 

‘unceasing desire of the same Church to extend the sphere of 

‘its action.’ He failed to see that his French antagonist might 


? 13th April. 2 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part 1., p.139. 


100 _ TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. X. 


*suddenly smile and throw off the cause of the Latin Church, 
and so rob the Czar of the signal triumph on which he was 
reckoning by the process of mere concession. 

But whilst to the common judgment of men who watched 
this haughty Embassy it seemed that the Czar in all the pride 
of strength and firm purpose was descending on his prey, he 
was fulfilling the utmost hope of the patient enemy in the West, 
who had long pursued him with a stealthy joy, and was now 
keenly marking him down. 


CHAPTER X. 


MEANTIME the course of events affecting the question of the 
State ofthe Holy Places had shifted the grounds of dispute; 
eee tt for the solemn act performed at Bethlehem in the 
Holy Places. foregoing December had converted the claims of 
the Latins into established privileges, and the Emperor Nich- 
olas, notwithstanding his religious excitement, had still enough 
wisdom to see that, although he might have been able to pre- 
vent this result by a violent use of his power at an earlier 
period, he could not now undo what was done. Without out- 
raging Catholic Europe, and even, it may be believed, his own 
sense of religious propriety, he could not now wrench the key 
of the Bethlehem Church from the hands of the Latin monks, 
nor tear down the silver star from the Holy Stable of the Na- 
tivity. Therefore all that Prince Mentschikoff demanded in 
regard to the key and the star was a declaration by the Turk- 
ish Government that the delivery of the key implied no own- 
ership, over the principal altar of the Church, that no change 
should be made in the system of the religious ceremonies or 
the hours of service, that the guardianship of the Great Gate 
should always be intrusted to a Greek priest, and finally that 
the silver star should be deemed to be a gift coming from the 
mere generosity of the Sultan, and conferring no sort of new 
rights.! In regard to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Geth- 
semane, Prince Mentschikoff required that the Greeks should 
have precedence at her tomb. He also insisted that the gar- 
dens of the Church of Bethlehem should remain in the joint 
guardianship of the Greeks and the Latins, and in demanding 
that some buildings which overlooked the terraces of the 


1 ‘astern Papers,’ part i., p. 129. 


Cuap. X.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 101 


Church of the Holy Sepulchre should be pulled down, he re- 
quired that the site of these buildings should never become the 
property of any ‘nation,’ but be walled off and kept apart as 
neutral ground. This last demand is curious. The Russian 
Government felt that even at Jerusalem it would be well to 
set apart one small shred of ground and keep it free from the 
strife of the Churches. 

But the last of Prince Mentschikoff’s demands in regard to 
the Holy Places was the one most hard to solve. It has been 
said that in comparing the ways of men in the East with the 
ways of men in the West there are found many subjects on 
which their views are not merely different, but opposite. One 
of these is the business of repairing Churches. Whilst the 
English Churchmen were contending that they ought not to 
be laden with the whole burden of keeping their sacred build- 
ings in repair, the Christians in Palestine were willing to set 
the world in flames for the sake of maintaining their rival 
claims to the honor of repairing churches. The cupola of the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem was out of order. 
The Greeks, supported by Russia, claimed the right to repair 
it. The Latins denied their right. The dispute raged. Then, 
as usual, the wise and decorous Turk stepped in between the 
combatants, and said he would repair the Church himself. 
This did not content the Greeks, and Prince Mentschikoff now 
demanded that the ancient rights of the Greeks to repair the 
great Cupola and Church at Jerusalem should be recognized 
and confirmed, and, although he did not reject the Sultan’s 
offer to supply the means for the repairs, he insisted that the 
work should be under the control of the Greek Patriarch of 
Jerusalem.! 

Some of these demands were resisted by France; and, al- 
though M. de Lavalette had been long since recalled, M. de la 
Cour who succeeded him seemed inclined to be somewhat per- 
sistent, especially in regard to the question of the Cupola and 
the question of precedence at the tomb of the Blessed Virgin. 

It seems probable, however, that although M. de la Cour may 
have been sufticiently supplied with instructions touching the 
immediate question in hand, he had not perceived so clearly 
as his English colleague the dawn of the new French policy. 
From the communications of his own Government before he 
crossed the Channel, from his sojourn at Paris, and from the 
tenor of the dispatches from England, Lord Stratford had gath- 
ered means of inferring that France no longer intended to keep 


1 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 129. 


102 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap, X 


herself apart from England by persisting in her pressure upon 
the Sultan, and, supposing that she had made up her mind to 
enter upon this new policy, Lord Stratford might well enter- 
tain a hope that the question whether a Greek priest should 
be allowed to control the repair of a Cupola at Jerusalem, or 
whether the door-keeper of a Church should be a Greek or a 
Latin, would not be fought with undue obstinacy by the quick- 
witted countrymen of Voltaire. He spoke with M. de la Cour, 
and found that he was prepared for concession, if matters could 
be so arranged as to satisfy what Lord Stratford, in his haughty 
and almost zoological way, liked to call ‘French feelings of 
honor.” 

By means of his communications with the Turks, the English 
Lord Strat- | Ambassador easily ascertained the points on which 
fordsmea Prince Mentschikoff might be expected to be inex- 
tling it. orable. These were:—the repair of the Cupola, the 
question of precedence at the tomb of the Virgin, and the 
question about the Greek door-keeper in the Church of Beth- 
lehem. Furnished with this clew, Lord Stratford saw M. de 
la Cour, and dissuaded him from committing himself to a de- 
termined resistance on any of these three questions. He also 
gave his French colleague to understand that in his opinion 
the Greek pretension upon these three points stood on strong 
ground, and urged him to bear in mind the great European 
interests at stake, the declared moderation of the French Govy- 
ernment, and the triumph already achieved by France in regard 
to the key and the silver star. And then Lord Stratford gave 
M. de la Cour a pleasing glimpse of the discomfiture into which 
their Russian colleague would be thrown if only the question 
of the Holy Places could-be settled.2 The French Ambassa- 
dor soon began to enter into the spirit of these counsels. 

On the other hand, Prince Mentschikoff was also willing to 
dispose of this question of the Holy Places, for he had now seen 
enough to be aware that he would not encounter sufficient re- 
sistance upon this matter to give him either a signal triumph 
or a tenable ground of rupture, and the angry dispatches which 
he was receiving from St. Petersburg made him impatient to 
press forward his ulterior demand. The two contending ne- 
- gotiators being thus disposed, it was soon found that the hin- 
derances which prevented their coming to terms were very 
slender. But it often happens that the stress which a common 
man lays upon any subject of dispute is proportioned to the 
energy which he has spent in dealing with it rather than to the 


> ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i, p. 134, 2 Thid., p. 155. 


Cuar. X] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. - 108 


real magnitude of the question itself; and when Prince Ments- 
chikoff and M. de la Cour seemed to be approaching to a settle- 
ment, they allowed their minds to become once again so much 
heated by the strenuous discussions of small matters that ‘ the 
‘difficulty of settling the question of the Holy Places threat- 
‘ened to increase. The French and Russian Ambassadors in- 
‘sisted on their respective pretensions, while the Porte inclined 
‘but hesitated to assume the responsibility of deciding between 
‘them.’' Then at last the hour was ripe for the intervention 
of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. ‘I thought,’ said he, ‘it was 
‘time for me to adopt a more prominent part in reconciling 
‘the adverse parties.’ 

He was more than equal to the task. Being by nature so 
grave and stately as to be able to refrain from a smile without 
effort and even without design, he prevented the vain and pre- 
sumptuous Russian from seeing the minuteness and inanity of 
the things which he was gaining by his violent attempt at di- 
plomacy. For the Greek Patriarch to be authorized to watch 
the mending of a dilapidated roof, for the Greek votaries to 
have the first hour of the day at a tomb, and finally for the 
door-keeper of a Church to be always a Greek, though without 
any right of keeping out his opponents—these things might 
be tr ifles, but awarded to All the Russias through the stately 
mediation of the English Ambassador, they seemed to gain in 
size and majesty, and for the moment perhaps the sensations 
of the Prince were nearly the same as though he were receiv- 
ing the surrender of a province or the engagements of a great 
alliance. On the other hand, Lord Stratford was unfailing in 
his. deference to the motives of action which he had classed 
under the head of ‘ French feelings of honor,’ and if M. de la 
Cour was set on fire by the thought.that at the tomb of the 
Virgin, or any where else, the Greek priests were to perform 
their daily worship before the hour appointed for the services 
of the Church which looked to France for support, Lord Strat- 
ford was there to explain in his grand quiet way that the pri- 
ority proposed to be given to the Greeks was a priority result- 
ing from the habit of early prayer which obtained in Oriental 
Churches, and not from their claim to have precedence over 
the species. of monk which was protected by Frenchmen. At 
length he addressed the two Ambassadors ; he solemnly ex- 
pr essed his hope that they would come to an adjustment. His 
words brought calm. In obedience, as it were, to the order 
of Nature, the lesser minds gave way to the greater, and the 


1 “Wastern Papers,’ part i., p. 157. 


104 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. X. 


contention between the Churches for the shrines of Palestine 
was closed. The manner in which the Sultan should 
guarantee this apportionment of the shrines was 
still left open, but in all other respects the question of the Holy 
Places was settled.! 

According to the terms of the arrangement thus effected, 
a elt Se the key of the Church of Bethlehem, and the silver 
which it was star placed in the Grotto of the Nativity, were to 
SRS: remain where they were, but were to confer no new 

right on the Latins, and the door-keeper of the Church was to 
be a Greek priest as before, but was to have no right to ob- 
struct other nations in their right to enter the building. The 
question of precedence at the tomb of the Blessed Virgin was 
ingeniously cluded by the device before spoken of, for the pri- 
ority given to the Greeks was treated as though it resulted 
from a convenient arrangement of hours rather than from any 
intent to grant precedence, and it was accordingly arranged 
that the Greeks should worship in the Church every morning 
immediately after sunrise, and then the Armenians, and then the 
Latins, each nation having an hour and a half for the purpose. 
Perhaps it was in order to hinder the outgoing worshipers 
from coming into conflict with those who were about to begin 
their devotions, that the gentle Armenians were thus inter- 
posed between the two angry Churches. The gardens of the 
Convent of Bethlehem were to remain as before under the 
joint care of the Greeks and Latins. With regard to the cu- 
pola of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it was arranged that 
it should be repaired by the Sultan in such a way as not to al- 
ter its form; and if in the course of the building any deviation 
from, this engage ement should appear to be thr eatened, the 
Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem was to be authorized to remon- 
strate, with a view to guard against innovation. The build- 
ings overlooking the terraces of the Church of the Holy Sepul- 
chre were to have their windows walled up, but were not to 
be demolished, and therefore no effect could be given to the 
Xussian plan of setting apart a neutral ground to be kept free 
from the dominion of both the contending Churches. All 
these arrangements were to be embodied in firmans addressed 
by the Sultan to the Turkish authorities at Jerusalem.?. 

Thus, after having tasked the patience of Enropean diplo- 
macy for a period of nearly three years, the business of appor- 
tioning the holy shrines of Palestine between the Churches of 
the East and of the West was brought at last to a close. The 

? April 22nd, 1853. ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 157. 
? “Eastern Papers,’ part i., p.'248. 


He settles it. 


Cuar. XI.] > BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 105 


question was perhaps growing ripe for settlement when Lord 
Stratford reached Constantinople, but, whether it was so or not, 
he closed it in seventeen days. For the part which he had 
taken in helping to achieve this result he received the thanks 
of the Turkish Government, and of the Russian and the French 
Ambassadors. The Divan might well be grateful to him, and 
he deserved too the thanks of his French colleague; for, having 
more insight into the new policy of the French Government 
than M. de Ja Cour, he was able to place him in the path which 
turned out to be the right one. But when Lord Stratford re- 
ceived the thanks of Prince Mentschikoff he felt perhaps that 
the gravity which had served him well in these transactions 
was a gift which was still of some use. 


CHAPTER. XI. 


Wuixtst the question of the Holy Places was approaching 
the solution which was attained on the 22nd of April, Prince 
Mentschikoff went on with his demand for the protectorate of 
the Greek Church in Turkey, but the character of his mission 
was fitfully changed from time to time by the tenor of his in- 
Peaceful as. Structions from home. On the 12th of April, the 
pect of the ne- peaceful views which had prevailed at St. Peters- 
pouption: burg some weeks before were still governing the 
Russian embassy at Constantinople, and Lord Stratford was 
able to report that the altered tone and demeanor of Prince 
Mentschikoff corresponded with the conciliatory assurances 
which Count Nesselrode had been giving in the previous month 
to Sir Hamilton Seymour. But on the following day all was 
changed. Fresh dispatches came in from St. Petersburg. They 
Angry ais. | breathed anger and violent impatience, and of this 
Bees oH « anger and of this impatience the causes were visi- 

: ble. It was the measure adopted in Paris, several 
weeks before, which had rekindled the dying embers of the 
quarrel at St. Peter sburg, and the torch was now brought to 
Constantinople. It has been seen that, without reason, and 
without communication with the English Ministers! (though 
it professed to be acting in unison with them), the French Gov- 
Cause of the ernment had ordered the Toulon fleet to approach 
stance. the scene of controversy by advancing to Salamis ; 


1 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 98. 
iy 


106 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XL 


and it was whilst the indignation roused by this movement 
was still fresh in the mind of the Emperor Nicholas that the 
dispatches had been framed. Moreover, at the time of send- 
ing off the dispatches,-the Czar knew that by the day they 
reached the shores of the Bosphorus, the man of whom he 
never could think with temper or calmness would already be 
at Constantinople, and he of course understood that in the way 
of diplomatic strife his Lord High Admiral the Serene Prince 
Governor of Finland was unfit for an encounter with Lord 
Stratford. He seems therefore to have determined to extri- 
cate his Ambassador from the unequai conflict by putting an 
end to what there was of a diplomatic character in thé mission, 
and urging him into a course of sheer violence which would 
supersede the finer labors of negotiation. 

From the change which the dispatches wrought in Prince 
Mentschikoff’s course of action, from the steps which he after- 
ward took, and from the known bent and temper of the Czar’s 
mind, it may be inferred that the instructions now received by 
the Russian Ambassador were somewhat to this effect: “The 
Inferred tenor -rench fleet has been ordered to Salamis. The 
ofthe fresh = $ Kmperor is justly indignant. You must bring 
aepatehes: your mission to a close forthwith. Be peremptory 
‘both with the French and the Turks. If the French Ambas- 
‘sador is obstinate enough upon the question of the Holy Places 
‘to give you a tenable ground on which you ean stand out, then 
‘hasten at once to a rupture upon that business without farther 
‘discussion about our ulterior demands. But if the French 
‘ Ambassador throws no sufficing difficulties in the way of the 
‘settlement of the question of the Holy Places, then press your 
‘demand for the protectorate of the Greek Church. Press it 
‘peremptorily. In carrying out these mstructions, you have 
‘full discretion so far as concerns all forms and details, but in 
‘regard to time the Emperor grants you no latitude. You 
‘must force your mission to a close. By the time you receive 
‘this dispatch Stratford Canning will be at Constantinople. He 
‘has ever thwarted His Majesty the Emperor. The inseruta- 
‘ble will of Providence has bestowed upon him great gifts of 
‘mind which he has used for no other purpose than to baffle 
‘and humiliate the Emperor, and keep down the Orthodox 
‘Church. In negotiation or in contest for influence over the 
‘Turks he would overcome you and crush you, but his instrue- 
‘tions do not authorize him to be more than a mere peaceful 
‘negotiator. You, on the contrary, are supported by force. 
‘He can only persuade: you can threaten. Strike terror. Make 
‘the Divan feel the weight of our preparations in Bessarabia 


Cnar. X1.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 107 


‘and at Sebastopol. Dannenburg’s horsemen are close upon 
‘the Pruth. When the Emperor remembers the position of 
‘the 4th and the 5th corps d’armée and the forwardness of his 
‘naval preparations, he conceives he has a right to expect that 
‘you should instantly be able to take the ascendant over a man 
‘who, with all his hellish ability, is after all nothing more than 
‘the representative of a country absorbed in the pursuit of 
‘gain. The Emperor can not and will not endure that his Rep- 
‘resentative, supported by the forces of the Empire, should re- 
‘main secondary to the English Ambassador. Again the Em- 
‘peror commands me to say you must strike terror. Use a 
‘fierce insulting tone. Ifthe Turks remain calm, it will be be- 
‘cause Stratford Canning supports them. Therefore demand 
‘private audiences of the Sultan, and press upon his fears. If 
‘your last demands, whatever they may be, are rejected, quit 
‘Constantinople immediately with your whole suite, and carry 
‘away with you the whole staft of our Legation.’ 

On the day after receiving his dispatches Prince Mentschi- 
Mentschikort’s KOf had a long interview with Rifaat Pasha, and 
cemand fora strove to wrench from him the assent of the Turkish 
protectorate of Government to the terms already submitted to the 
i ee Porte as the project for a secret treaty. And, al- 

i though it happened that in the course of the negoti- 
ations on this subject Russia submitted to accept many changes 
in the form or the wording of the engagement which she re- 
quired, it may be said with accuracy that from the first to the 
last she always required the Porte to give her an instrument 
which should have the force of a treaty engagement, and con- 
fer upon her the right to insist. that the Greek Church and 
Clergy in Turkey should continue in the enjoyment of all their 
existing privileges. It was clear, therefore, that if the Sultan 
should be induced to set his seal to any instrument of this kind, 
Effect which he would be chargeable with a breach of treaty en- 
Thee be ton. Gagements whenever a Greck bishop could satisfy 
ceding it. a Russian Emperor that there was some privilege 
formerly enjoyed by him or his Church which had been varied 
or withdrawn. It was plain that for the Sultan to yield thus 
much would be to make the Czar a partaker of his sovereign- 
ty. This seemed clear to men of all nations, except the Rus- 
sians themselves, but especially it seemed clear to those who 
happened to know something of the structure of the Ottoman 
Empire. The indolence or the wise instinct of the Mussulman 
rulers had given to the Christian ‘nations’ living within the 
Sultan’s dominions many of the blessings which we cherish 
under the name of ‘ self-government,’ and since the Greck Chris- 


108 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XI. 


tians had exercised these privileges by deputing their bishops 
and their priests to administer the authority conceded to the 
‘nation,’ it followed that the spiritual dominion of the priest- 
hood had become blended with a great share of temporal power. 
So many of the duties of pre efects, of magistrates, of assessors, 
of collectors, and of police were dischar eed by bishops, priests, 
and deacons, that a protectorate of these ecclesiastics might be 
so used by a powerfnl foreign Prince, as to carry with it a vir- 
tual sovereignty over ten or four teen millions of laymen. 

All this had been seen by Lord Stratford and by the Turk- 
The negotia- ish Ministers, and when Prince Mentschikoff press- 
fons which ed the treaty upon Rifaat Pasha he was startled, as 
demand. it would seem, by the calmness, and the full knowl- 
edge which he encountered. ‘The treaty,’ said Rifaat Pasha, 
‘would be giving to Russia an exclusive protectorate over the 
‘whole Greek population, their clergy, and their Churches.’! 

The Prince, it would seem, now began to know that he had 
to do with the English Ambassador, for he made the alteration 
before adverted to in the draft of his treaty, and on the 20th 
of April read it in its amended shape to Lord Stratford, and 
assured him that it was only an explanatory guarantee of exist- 
ing treaties, giving to the co-religionists of Russia what Austria 
already possessed with regard to hers. Lord Stratford on that 
day had approached to within forty-eight hours of the settle- 
ment of the question of the Holy Places, which he deemed it 
so vital to achieve, and it may be easily ‘imagined that in the 
remarks which he might make upon hearing the draft read he 
would abstain with great care from irritating discussion, and 
would not utter a word more than was necessary for the-pur- 
pose of fairly indicating that his postponement of discussion 
on the subject of the ulterior demands was not to be mistaken 
for acquiescence; but all that for that purpose was needed he 
fairly said, for he observed to Prince Mentschikoff ‘that the 
‘Sultan’s promise to protect his Christian subjects in the free 
‘exercise of their religion differed extremely from a right con- 
‘ferred on any foreign Power to enforce that protection, and | 
‘also that the same degree of interference might be dangerous 
‘to the Porte, when exercised by so powerful an empire as 
‘Russia on behalf of ten millions of Greeks, and innocent in 
‘the case of Austria, whose influence derivable from religious 
‘sympathy was confined to a small number of. Catholics, in- 
‘cluding her own subjects. These remarks were surely not 
ambiguous, but it seems probable that Prince Mentschikoff, 


' «Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 153. 2 Ibid., p. 156. 


Cuar. XL] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 109 


misled by his previous impression as to what Lord Stratford 
really objected to, may have imagined that the proposed con- 
vention in its altered form would not be violently disapproved 
by the English Ambassador. At all events, he seems to have 
instructed his Government to that effect. 

On the 19th of April the Russian Ambassador addressed his 
remonstrances and his demands to the Turkish Minister for 
Foreign Affairs in the form of a diplomatic Note. In the first 
sentence of this singular document Prince Mentschikoff tells 
the Minister for Foreign Affairs that he must have ‘seen the 
‘duplicity of his predecessor.’ In the next he tells him he 
must be ‘convinced of the extent to which the respect due to 
‘the Emperor had been disregarded, and how great was his 
‘magnanimity in offering to the Porte the means of escaping 
‘from the embarrassments occasioned to it by the bad faith of 
‘its Ministers ;? and then, after more objurgation in the same 
strain, and after dealing in a peremptory way with the question 
of the Holy Places, the Note goes on to declare that ‘in con- 
‘sequence of the hostile tendencies manifested for some years 
‘past in whatever related to Russia, she required in bebalf of 
‘the religious communities of the orthodox Church an ex. 
‘planatory and positive act of guarantee. Then the Note re- 
_ quested that the Ottoman Cabinet would ‘be pleased in its 
‘wisdom to weigh the serious nature of the offense which it 
‘had committed, and compare it with the moderation of the 
“demands made for reparation and guarantee, which a consid- 
‘eration of legitimate defense might have put forward at great- 
‘er length and-in more peremptory terms.’ Finally the Note 
stated that ‘the reply of the Minister for Foreign Affairs would 
‘indicate to the Ambassador the ulterior duties which he would 
have to discharge,’ and intimated that those duties would be 
‘consistent with the dignity of the Government which he rep 
‘resented, and of the religion professed by his Sovereign.’} 

It might have been politic for Prince Mentschikoff to send 
such a Note as this in the midst of the panic which followed 
his landing in the early days of March, but it was vain to send 
itnow. The Turks had returned to their old allegiance. They 
could take their rest, for they knew that Lord Stratford watch- 
ed. Him they feared, him they trusted, him they obeyed. It 
was in vain now that the Prince sought to crush the will of the 
Sultan and of his Ministers. Whether he threatened, or wheth- 
er he tried to cajole; whether he sent his dragoman with angry 
messages to the Porte, or whether he went thither in person ; 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 158. 


110 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XI. 


whether he urged the members of the Government in private 
interviews, or whether he obtained audience of the Sultan, he 
always encountered the same firmness, the same courteous def- 
-erence, and, above all, that same terrible moderation which day 
by day, and hour by hour, was. putting him more and more in 
the wrong. The voice which spoke to him might be the voice 
of the Grand Vizier, or the voice of the Reis Effendi, or the 
voice of the Sultan himself, but the mind which he was really 
encountering was always the mind of one man. : 

Far from quailing under the threatening tone of the Note, 
the Turkish Government now determined to enter into no con- 
vention with Russia, and to reject Prince Mentschikoff’s pro- 
posals respecting the protection of the Greek Church in Turkey. 
The Grand Vizier and the Reis Effendi calmly consulted Lord 
Stratford as to the manner in which they should give effect to 
the decision of the Cabinet, and Lord Stratford, now placed at 

ease by the settlement of the question of the Holy Places, con- 

tentedly prepared to encounter the next expected moves of 
Prince Mentschikoff.t 

In strife for ascendency like that which was now going on 
Rege ofthe between the Czar and Lord Stratford, the pain of 
Czar on find- yndergoing defeat is of such a kind that the pangs 
ing himself en- 5 5 
countered by Of the sufferer accumulate; and far from being as- 
Lord Stratford. syaoed by time, they are every day less easy to bear 
than they were the day before. By the pomp and the declared 
significance of Prince Mentschikoff’s mission, the Emperor 
Nicholas had drawn upon himself the eyes of Europe, and the 
presence of the religious ingredient had brought him under the 
gaze of many millions of his own subjects who were not com- 
monly observers of the business of the state. And he who, in 
transactions thus watched by men, was preparing for him cruel 
discomfiture—he who kept him on the rack, and regulated his 
torments with cold unrelenting precision—was the old familiar 
enemy whom he had once refused to receive as-the English 
Ambassador at St. Petersburg. People who knew the springs 
of action in the Russian capital used to say at that time that 
the whole ‘ Eastern Question,’ as it was called, lay inclosed in 
one name—lay inclosed in the name of Lord Stratford. They 
acknowledged that the Emperor Nicholas could not bear the 
stress of our Ambassador’s authority with the Porte. _ 

And in truth, the Czar’s power of endurance was drawing 
to a close. He wavered and wavered again and again. He 
was versed in business of state, and it would seem that when 


1 94th April. Ihid., p- 160. The settlement of the question of the Holy 
Places was on the 22nd. 


Cuap. XI.] _ BROUGHT ON THE WAR. : 11 


his mind was turned to things temporal he truly meant to be 
politic and just. But in his more religious moments he was 
furious. Even for Nicholas the Czar it was all but im possible 
to endure the Ambassador’s political ascendency, but the bare 
thought of Lord Stratford’s protecting Christianity in Turkey 
was more than could be borne by Nicholas the Pontiff. Men 
not jesting approached him with stories that the Ambassador 
had determined to bring over the Sultan to the Church of En- 
gland. His brain was not strong enough to be safe against 
rumors like that. He almost came to feel that the Englishman 
who seemed to be endued with strange powers of compulsion 
always used for the support of Moslem dominion and for curb- 
ing the orthodox Russo-Greek Church was a being in his na- 
ture Satanic, and that resistance to him was as much a duty 
(and was a duty as thickly beset with practical difficulties) as 
resistance to the great enemy of mankind. Maddened at last 
by this singular kind of torment, the Czar broke loose from the 
restraints of policy, and was even so void of counsel, that, hav- 
ing determined to do violence to the Sultan, he did not take 
the common care of giving to his action any semblance of con- 
sistency with public law. 

The dispatches framed under the orders of a monarch in this 
Its effect upon Condition of mind reached Prince Mentschikoff in 
the negotiation. the beginning of May. Breathing fresh anger, and 
enjoining haste, they fiercely drove him on. They urged him 
to an almost instantaneous rupture, without giving him a stand- 
ing-ground for his quarrel. Yet at this time the condition of 
things was of such a kind that a good Cause, nay, even a spe- 
cious grievance, would have helped Prince Mentschikoff better 
than the advance of the 4th and 5th corps or the patrolling of 
Dannenburg’s cavalry. 

In truth, what now befell the Russian Ambassador was this: 
Mentschikoff's —-he found himself placed under the compulsion of 
dittentty.. violent instructions at a time when all ground for 
just resentment was wanting. He could obey his orders, and 
force on arupture, but he could no longer do this upon grounds 
which Europe would regard as having a semblance of fairness. 
When he had dispatched his note of the 19th of April, the 
question of the Holy Places was still unsettled, and he was then 
able to blend that grievance with other matters, and make it 
serve as a basis for his ulterior demands; but now that that 
question was disposed of, his standing-ground failed him, for 
he alleged against the Sultan no infraction of a treaty, and the 
only grievance of which he had to complain had been redressed 
on the 22nd of April; and yet, passing straight from this 


112 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cudp. XI. ! 


smooth condition of things, he had to call upon the Sultan to 
sign a treaty which he disapproved, and to make his refusal to 
do so a ground for the immediate rupture of diplomatic re- 
lations. e 

The natural hope of a diplomatist placed in a stress of this 
He is baffledby Sort would have lain in the chance that the Govern- 
Lord Stratford. ment upon which he was pressing might be guilty 
of some imprudence, and it may be inferred that the Note of 
the 19th had been framed with a view of provoking the Turk- 
ish Ministers into a burst of anger. But every hope of this 
kind had been baffled. Turks were fanatical, Turks were fierce, 
Turks were quick to avenge, and, above all, Turks. were liable 
to panic; but some spell had come upon the race. The spell 
had come upon the Sultan, it had come upon the Turkish Min- 
isters, it had come upon the Great Council, it had come even 
upon the larger mass of the warlike people who bring their 
feelings to bear upon the policy of their Sultan. At every step 
of his negotiation Prince Mentschikoff encountered an adver- 
sary always courteous, always moderate, but cold, steadfast, 
wary, and seeming as though he looked to the day when per- 
haps he might wreak cruel vengeance. Who this was the 
Prince now knew, and he perhaps began to understand the 
nature of the torment inflicted upon his imperial Master by the 
bare utterance of the one hated name. Prince Mentschikoff 
found himself powerless as a negotiator, and it was clear that 
unless he could descend to the rude expedient of an ultimatum 
or athreat, he was a man annulled. Indeed, without some act 
of violence he could hardly deliver himself from ridicule. 

Therefore, on the 5th of May, Prince Mentschikoff forwarded 
He presses his tO the Minister for Foreign Affairs the draft of a 
demindina Sened or Convention, purporting to be made be- 
new form. _ tween the Sultan and the Emperor of Russia. This 
proposed Sened confirmed with the force of a treaty engage- 
ment the arrangements respecting the Holy Places which had 
been made in favor of the Greek Church, and it also introduced 
and applied to the rival Churches a provision similar in its 
wording to that which often appears in commercial treaties, 
and goes by the name of ‘the most favored nation clause.’ 
But the noxious feature of the Convention was detected in the 
Article which purported to secure for ever to the Orthodox 
Church and its clergy all the rights and immunities which they 
had already enjoyed, and those of which they were possessed 
from ancient times.!. Here, under a new form, was the old en- 


+ ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 167. 


- 


Cuap. XI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 113 


deavor to obtain for Russia a protectorate of the Greek Church 
in Turkey. 

This draft of a Convention was annexed to a Note, in which 
Prince Mentschikoff pressed its immediate adoption, and urged 
the Sublime Porte, ‘laying aside all hesitation and all mistrust, 
‘by which,’ he declared ‘the dignity and the generous senti- 
‘ments of his august Master would be aggrieved,’! to delay its 
decision no longer. In conclusion, Prince Mentschikoff suf- 
fered himself to request that the Minister for Foreign Affairs 
would be good enough to let him have his answer by the fol- 
lowing Tuesday, and to add, that he could not ‘consider any 
‘longer delay in any other light than as a want of respect 
‘toward his Government, which would impose upon him the 
‘most painful duty.’! 

Upon receiving this hostile communication, the Minister for 
Counsels of  oreign Affairs appealed to Lord Stratford for coun- 
lord Strat-- sel. He advised the Turkish Government to be still 
at deferential, still courteous, still willing to go to the 
very edge of what might be safely conceded, but to stand 
firm. 

At this time Lord Stratford received a visit from Prince 
His communi- Mentschikoff, and ascertained from him that he did 
outions with . not mean to recede from his demands. The Prince 
chikoff. declared that he had run out the whole line of his 
moderation, and could go no farther, and that his Government 
would no longer submit to the state of inferiority in which he 
said Russia was held with reference to the co-religionists of 
the Emperor Nicholas. 

A few days later Lord Stratford addressed a letter to Prince 
Mentschikoff, in which, with all the diplomatic courtesy of 
which he was master, he strove to convey to the Prince some 
idea of the way in which he was derogating from that justice 
and moderation toward foreign sovereigns which had hitherto 
marked the reign of the Emperor Nicholas. The answer of 
Prince Mentschikoff announced that it was impossible for him 
to agree in the views pressed upon him by Lord Stratford, and 
(after a little more of the wasteful verbiage in which Russia 
used to assert that her exaction was good and wholesome for 
Turkey) the Prince claimed a right to freedom of action. He 
said that he was not conscious of having failed in the loyal as- 
surances given by his Government to the Cabinet of the Queen, 
declared that he had been perfectly sincere in his communica- 
tions with Lord Stratford, and owned that he had expected a 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 165. 


114 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XI. 


frank co-operation on his part. But when he had written 
these common things the truth broke out. ‘The Emperor’s 
‘legation,’ said he, ‘can not stay at Constantinople under the 
‘circumstances in which it has been placed. Jt can not sub- 
‘mit to the SEO uuare position to which it might be wished to 
‘reduce it.’ 

Lord Sevsttfond it would_seem, had now little hope of ghes 
able to bring about an accommodation, and henceforth his 
great object was to take care that the Porte should stand fir m, 
but should so act that in the opinion of England and of Europe 
the Sultan should seem justified im exposing himself to the 
hazard of a rupture with Russia. 

Late at night Lord Stratford saw the Grand Vizier at his 
Mis advice to COUNtry-house, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs 
the Turkish and the Seraskier were present. During the day 
Ministers. there had been a little failing of heart, and when 
the Turkish Ministers were in the presence of M. de la Cour, 
they had seemed ‘disposed to shrink from encountering the 
‘consequences of Prince Mentschikoff’s retiring in displeas- 
‘ure,’ but either they had dissembled their fears in the pres- 
ence of the English Ambassador, or else, whilst Lord Stratford 
was in the same room with them, their fear of other Powers 
was suspended. They were unanimous in regarding the Con- 
vention as inadmissible. Lord Stratford’s determination was 
that the demand of Prince Mentschikoff should be resisted, but 
that at the same time there should be shown so much of court- 
esy and of forbearance, and so great a willingness to go to the 
utmost limit of safe concession, and to improve the condition 
of the Christian subjects of the Porte, that the Turks should 
appear before Europe in a character almost angelic. ‘I ad- 
‘vised them,’ said he, ‘to open a door for negotiation in the 
‘ Note to be prepared, and to withhold no concession compati- 
‘ble with the real welfare and independence of the Empire. I 
‘could not in conscience urge them to accept the Russian de- 
‘mands, as now presented to them, but I reminded them of 
‘the guarantee required by Prince Mentschikoff and strongly 

‘recommended that if the guarantee he required was inadmis- 
‘sible, a substitute for it should be found in a frank and com- 
‘prehensive exercise of the Sultan’s authority in the promulga- 
Shion of a firman, securing both the spiritual and temporal 
‘privileges of all the Porte’s tributary subjects, and by way of 
‘farther security communicated officially to the five great 
Powers of Christendom.’ To all these counsels the Turkish 
Ministers listened with assenting mind. : 


1 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p.217. ? Ibid., p. 177. 3d. ibid. 


Cuar. XI] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 115 


But it was now late in the night, and the Ambassador rose. 
Perhaps the hour and the Ambassador’s movement to depart 
cast a shadow of anxiety upon the minds of the Turkish Min- 
isters. Perhaps the ripple of the waters (for the conference 
was in a house on the edge of the Bosphorus) called to mind 
the thought of the English flag. At all events, the Grand 
Vizier, in that moment of weakness, suffered himself to cast a 
thought after the arm of the flesh, and to ask whether the 
Porte might expect the eventual approach of the English 
squadron in the Mediterranean. Lord Stratford rebuked him. 
‘I replied,’ said he, ‘that { considered the position in its pres- 
‘ent stage to be one of a moral character, and consequently 
‘ that its difficulties or hazards, whatever they might be, should 
‘be rather met by acts of a similar description than by demon- 
‘strations calculated to increase alarm and provoke resent- 
ment.’ It was a new and a strange task for this Grand Vizier 
of a warlike Tartar nation to be called upon to defend a threat- 
ened empire by ‘acts of a moral character,’ but after all his re- 
liance was upon the man. It might be hard for him to under- 
stand how the mere advantage of being in the right could be 
used against the Sebastopol fleet, or the army that was hover- 
ing upon the Pruth; but if he jooked upon the close, angry, 
resolute lips of the Ambassador, and the grand overhanging 
of his brow, he saw that which more than all else in the world 
takes hold of the Oriental mind, for he saw strength held in re- 
serve. And this faith was of such a kind that, far from being 
weakened, it would gather new force from Lord Stratford’s 
refusal to speak of material help. The Turkish Ministry de- 
termined to reject Prince Mentschikoft’s proposals, and to do 
this in the way advised by the English Ambassador. All this 
while Lord Stratford was unconscious of exercising any as- 
cendency over his fellow-creatures, and it seemed to him that 
the Turks were determining this momentous question by 
means of their unbiased judgments.! 

Prince Mentschikoff was soon made aware of the refusal 
with which his demand was to be met, and finding that all his 
communications with the Turkish Ministers gave him nothing 
but the faithful echo of the counsels addressed to them by 
Lord Stratford, he seems to have imagined the plan of over- 
stepping the Turkish Ministers, and endeavoring to wring an 
assent to his demands from the Sultan himself. It seems prob- 
able that Lord Stratford had been apprized of this intention, 
and was willing to defeat it, for on the 9th he sought a private 


} ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 213. 


116 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XT, 


audience of the Sultan; he sought it, of course, through the le- 
gitimate channel. The Minister for Foreign Affairs went with 
Lord Stratford to the Sultan’s apartment, “and then withdrew. 
His audience ‘Che Ambassador spoke grav ely to the Sultan of the 
of the Sultan, (anger with which his Empire was threatened, and 
then of the grounds for confidence. He was happy, he said, to 
find that His Majesty’s servants, both. Ministers and Council, 
were not less inclined to gratify the Russian Ambassador with 
all that could be safely conceded to him, than determined to 
withhold their consent from every requisition calculated to in- 
flict a serious injury on the independence and dignity of their 
Sovereign. ‘I had waited,’ said Lord Stratford, ‘to know 
‘their own unbiased impressions respecting the kind of guar- 
‘antee demanded by Prince Mentschikoff, and I could not do 
‘ otherwise than approve the decision which they appeared to 
‘have adopted with unanimity. My own impression is, that 
‘if your Majesty should sanction that decision, the Ambassa- 
‘dor will break off his relations with the Porte and go away, 
‘together perhaps with his whole embassy: nor is it quite im- 
‘possible even that a temporary occupation, however unjust, 
‘of the Danubian Principalities by Russia may take place 5 
‘but I feel certain that neither a declaration of war nor any 
‘other act of open hostility is to be apprehended for the pres- 
‘ent, as the Emperor Nicholas can not resort to such extremi- 
‘ties on account of the pending differences without contradict- 
‘ing his most solemn assurances, and exposing himself to the 
‘indignant censure Of all Europe. I conceive that under such 
‘circumstances the true position to be maintained by the Porte 
‘is one of moral resistance to such demands as are really mad- 
‘missible on just and essential grounds, and that the principle 
‘should even be applied under protest to the occupation of the 
‘ Principalities, not in weakness or despair, but in reliance on 
‘a good cause, and on the sympathy of friendly and independ-. 
‘ent Governments. A firm adherence to this line of conduct, 
‘as long as it is possible to maintain it with honor, will, in my 
‘judgment, offer the best chances of ultimate success with the 
‘least practicable degree of provocation, and prevent disturb- 
‘ance of commercial interests. This language,’ writes Lord 
Stratford, ‘appeared to interest the Sultan ‘deeply, and also to 
‘coincide with His Majesty’s existing opinions. He said that 
‘he was well aware of the dangers — to which I had alluded; 
‘that he was perfectly prepared, in the exercise of his own free 
‘will, to confirm and to render effective the protection prom- 
‘ised to all classes of his tributary subjects in matters of relig- 
‘ious worship, including the immunities and privileges granted 


CHar. XI] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 117 


‘to their respective clergy. He showed me the last communi- 
‘cations in writing which had passed between his Ministers 
‘and the Russian Kinbassy; he thanked me for having helped 
‘to bring the question of the Holy Places to an arrangement; 
‘he professed his reliance on the friendly support of Great 
‘ Britain.’ 

But now Lord.Stratford apprized the Sultan that he had a 
The disclosure COMMuNication to make to him which he had hith- 
which he had erto withheld from his Ministers, reserving it for 
reserved for : : * a 5 
the Sultan's the private ear of his Majesty. The pale Sultan 
= listened. ; 

Then the Ambassador announced that, in the event. of im- 
minent danger, he was instructed to request the Commander 
of Her Majesty’s forces in the Mediterranean to hold his 
squadron in readiness.! 

This order was of itself a slight thing, and it conferred but 
a narrow and stinted authority; but, imparted to the Sultan 
in private audience by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, it came 
with more weight than the promise of armed support from 
the lips of a common Statesman. Long withheld from the 
Turkish Ministers, and now disclosed to them through their 
Sovereign, it confirmed them in the faith that, whatever a man 
might know of the great Eltchi’s power, there was always 
more to be known. And when a man once comes to be thus 
thought of by Orientals, he is more their master than one who 
seeks to overpower their minds by making coarse pretenses 
of strength. 

On the 10th the Secretary for Foreign Affairs sent his an 
Turkish an- swer to Prince Mentschikoft’s demand: The let- 
Now ea. ter was full of courtesy and deference toward Rus-. 
mand. sia: it declared it to be the firm intention of the 
Porte to maintain unimpaired the rights of all the tributary 
subjects of the Empire, and it expressed a willingness to ne- 
gotiate with Russia concerning a church and a hospital at Je- 
rusalem, and also as to the privileges which should be con- 
ceded to Russian subjects, monks, and pilgrims; but the Note 
objected to entertain that portion of the Russian demands 
which went to give Russia a protectorate of the Greek Church 
in Turkey.? 

On the following day Prince Mentschikoff sent an angry 
Mentschikoft’s Teply to this Note, declining to accept it as an an- 
angry reply. swer to his demand. He stated that he was in- 
structed to negotiate for an engagement guaranteeing the priv- 

1 ¢FKastern Papers,’ part i., p. 213. 
* May 10th. ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 196. 


118 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XL 


ileges of the Greek Church, as a mark of respect to the relig- 
ious convictions of the Emperor, and if the principles which 
formed the basis of this proposed mark of respect were to be 
rejected, and if the Porte by a systematic opposition was to 
persist in closing the very approaches to an intimate and di- 
rect understanding, then the Prince declared with pain that 
he must consider his mission at an end, must break off rela- 
tions with the Cabinet of the Sultan, and throw upon the re- 
sponsibility of his Ministers all the consequences which might 
ensue. The Prince ended his Note by requiring that it should 
be answered within three days.! 

On the second day after sending this Note, Prince Mentschi- 
koff was to have had an interview with the Grand Vizier at 
half past one o’clock; but before that hour came the Prince 
took a step which had the effect of breaking up the Ministry. 
His privateau. Without the concurrence, and apparently without 
dience of the the previous knowledge of the Ministers, he found 
aS means to obtain a private audience of the Sultan 
at 10 o’clock in the morning. The Sultan did wrongly when 
he submitted to receive a foreign Ambassador without the ad- 
vice or knowledge of his Ministers, and the Grand Vizier had » 
the spirit to resent the course thus taken by his Sovereign, 
for upon being sent for by the Sultan, immediately after the 
This causes a audience, he requested permission to stay at home, 


ehange of min- e “= 
istry at Jon. 20d at the same time gave up his seals of office. 


stantinopley The new Ministry, however, was formed of men 


who, as members of the Great Council, had declared opinions 
adverse to the extreme demands of Russia.2 Reshid Pasha 
became the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and this was 
not an appointment which disclosed any intention on the part 
of the Sultan to disengage himself from the counsels of the 
English Ambassador. f 

If the Sultan had erred in granting an audience without the 
assent of his Ministers, he had carried his weakness no farther. 
put failsto + Soon transpired that Prince Mentschikoff had 
shake the Sul- failed to wring from the Sultan any dangerous 
zs words. It seems that when the Prince came to 
press his demands upon the imperial ear, he found the monarch 
reposing in the calmness of mind which had been given him 
by the English Ambassador five days before, and in a few mo- 
ments he had the mortification of hearing that, for all answers 
to his demands, he was referred to the Ministers of State. 
In the judgment of Prince Mentschikoff, to be thus answered 


1 May 11th. ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 197. 
? “Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 194. ° Tbid., p. 195. 


Cnap. XI] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 119 


was to be remitted back to Lord Stratford. It was hard to 
bear. | 3 
Prince Mentschikoff began his intercourse with the new For- 
Mentschikoff eign Secretary by insisting upon an immediate re- 
ioe tis ae. Ply to his Note of the 11th of May. Reshid Pasha 
mands. asked for the delay of a few days on the ground 
of the change of Ministry. This reasonable demand was met 
at first by a refusal, but afterward by a Note, which seems to 
have been rendered incoherent by the difficulty in which Prince 
Mentschikoff was placed ; for, on the one hand, a request for a 
delay of a few days, founded upon a change of Ministry, was 
a request too fair to be refused with decency, and, on the oth- 
er hand, the violent orders which had just come in from St. 
Petersburg enjoined the Prince to close the unequal strife with 
Lord Stratford, and to enforce instant compliance, or at once 
break off and depart. The Note began by announcing that 
Reshid Pasha’s communication imposed upon the Russian 
Ambassador the duty of breaking off from the then present 
time his official relations with the Sublime Porte; but it added 
that the Ambassador would suspend the last demand, which 
was to determine the attitude which Russia would thenceforth 
assume toward Turkey. The Note farther declared that a 
continuance of hesitation on the part of the Ottoman Govern- 
ment would be regarded as an indication of reserve and dis- 
trust offensive to the Russian Government, and that the de- 
parture of the Russian Ambassador, and also of the Imperial 
Legation, would be the inevitable and immediate consequence. 
By the voices of forty-two against three, the Great Council 
The Great Of the Porte determined to adhere to the decision 
Couneil deter- already taken; and ‘on the 18th Reshid Pasha called 
mune to resis upon Prince Mentschikoff, and orally imparted to 
him. the extreme length to which the Turkish Government 
was willing to go in the way of concession. The-honor of the 
Porte required, he said, that the exclusively spiritual privileges 
granted under the Sultan’s predecessors, and confirmed by His 
Majesty, should remain in full force, and he declared that the 
equitable system pursued by the Porte toward its subjects de- 
Offers madeby Manded that the Greek clergy should be on as good 
the Porte, footing as other Christian subjects of the Sultan. 
vice of Lord He added, that a firman was to issue, proclaiming 
Bratore this determination on the part of the Sultan. In 
regard to the shrine at Jerusalem, Reshid Pasha was willing 
to engage that there should be no change without communi- 
eating with the Russian and French Governments. Reshid 
Pasha also consented that a church and hospital for the Rus- 


— 


120 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XI. 


sians should be built at Jerusalem; and in regard to all these 
Jast matters connected with the Holy Land, the Porte, he said, 
was willing to solemnize its promise by a formal convention. 
These overtures were made in exact accordance with a Paper 
of advice which Lord Stratford had placed in the hands of 
Reshid Pasha five days before.t. Virtually Reshid Pasha of- 
fered Prince Mentschikoff every thing which Russia had de- 
manded except the protectorate of the Greek Church in Tur- 
key.2. That he refused. 

Instantly, and without waiting for the written statement of 
the proposals orally conveyed to him by Reshid Pasha, Prince 
Mentschikoff determined to break off the negotiation. On the 
Mentschikoff Same day he addressed to the Porte an official 
replies by de- Note, which purported to be truly his last. In this 
claring his ° . . : 
mission atan he declared that, by rejecting with distrust the 
Ne wishes of the Emperor in favor of the orthodox 
Greco-Russian religion, the Sublime Porte had failed in what 
was due to an august and ancient ally. The refusal, he said, 
was a fresh injury. He declared his mission at an end; and 
after asserting that the Imperial Court could not, without 
prejudice to its dignity and without exposing itself to fresh 
insults, continue to maintain a mission at Constantinople, he 
announced that: he should not only quit Constantinople him- 
self, but should take with him the whole Staff of the Imperial 
Legation, except the Director of the Commercial Department. 
The Prince added, that the refusal of a guarantee for the ortho- 
dox Greco-Russian religion obliged the Imperial Government 
to seek in its own power that security which the Porte declined 
to give by way of treaty engagement; and he added, that any 
infringement of the existing state of the Eastern Church would 
be regarded as an act of hostility to Russia.3 

Prince Mentschikoff’s departure did not immediately follow 
The represent- the dispatch of this Note, and on the morning of 
atives of the the 19th Lord Stratford took a step of great mo- 
our Powers aay: : : 
assembled by Ment to the tranquillity of Kurope, for it laid the 
pont Stat seed of a wholesome policy, which, until it was 
Policy involy- ruined, as will be seen hereafter, by the evil designs 
edin this ste. of some, and by the weakness of other men, prom- 
ised fair to enforce justice and to maintain truth without bring- - 
ing upon the world the calamity ofa war. Instead of putting 
himself in communication with one only of the other great 
Powers, and so preparing a road to hostilities, the English 
Ambassador assembled the representatives of Austria, France, 

' “Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 196. ? Tbid., p. 205, and see p. 252. 

° 18th May.  Ibid., p. 206. 


ie 
Cnap. XI-] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 121 


Unanimity o¢ 20d Prussia. It then appeared that there was no es- 
the four repre- sential difference of opinion between the represent- 
sentatives: _atives of the four great Powers. None of them 
questioned the soundness of the Porte’s views in resisting the 
extreme demands of Russia; all acknowledged. the spirit of 
conciliation displayed by the Sultan’s Ministers; all were agreed 
in desiring to prevent the rupture; all desired that the Emperor 
Nicholas should be enabled to recede without discredit from 
the wrong path which he had taken, and were willing to cover 
his retreat by every device which was consistent with the 
honor and welfare of other States.. This union of opinion, fol- 
lowed close by concerted action, was surely a right example 
of the way in which it was becoming for Europe to regard an 


Their approach to injustice by one of the great Powers. 
PIORSUTSS. It was arranged that the Austrian Envoy should 


call upon Prince Mentschikoff; should apprize him of the sor- 
_ row with which the representatives of the four Powers con- 
templated the rupture of his relations with the Porte; should 
express the lively gratification which a friendly solution, if that 
were still possible, would afford them; and, finally, should as- 
certain whether the Prince would receive through a private 
channel the Porte’s intended Note, and give it a calm consid- 
eration.! This appeal from the representatives of the four 
great Powers produced no effect on the mind of Prince Ments- 
chikoff,? and Lord Stratford scarcely expected that it would do 
so; but it commenced, or rather it marked and strengthened, 
that expression of grave disapproval.on the part of the four 
Powers, which was the true and the safe corrective of an out- 
rage threatened by one. 

After his official relations with the Porte had come to a 
close, Prince Mentschikoff received and rejected the Turkish 
Note? which embodied the concessions already described to 
him orally by Reshid Pasha; but on the evening of the 20th 
of May the Prince determined to make a concession in point 
of form, and to be content to have the engagement which he 
was demanding from the Porte in the form of a diplomatic 
Russia’s ulti- Note, instead of a Treaty or Convention. In fur- 
matyn, therance of this view, though his official capacity 
had ceased, he caused to be delivered to Reshid Pasha the 
draft of a Note to be given by the Porte. This draft pur- 
ported to involve the Porte in engagements exactly the same 
as those which it had refused to contract, and to give to Rus- 


* ‘Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 205. ? Tbid., p. 219. 
* This Note, being the last offer made by the Turkish Government to 
Prince Mentschikoff, is printed in the Appendix, No. I. 


Vor, L—F 


a 
122 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ‘[Cuar. XL 


‘sia (by means of a Note instead of a Convention) the protect- 
‘crate of the Greek Church in Turkey.’ Reshid Pasha imme- 
diately sent the Note to Lord Stratford for communication to 
the three other representatives of the four Powers, with a re- 
quest that they would give an opinion as to the most advisable 
mode of proceeding. Early the next morning Lord Stratford 
ascertained that in the opinion of Reshid Pasha the altered 
form of the Russian demands left them as objectionable as 
ever.2. The Russians imagined that Reshid Pasha was willing 
to give way to them, and that he even entreated Lord Strat- 
ford to let him yield, but that the English Ambassador was 
inexorable. There was no truth in this notion.? Lord Strat- 
ford’s counsels had cut so deep into the mind of the Turkish 
Minister that he was well able to follow them without want- 
ing guidance from hour to hour. The English Ambassador 
assembled the representatives of the three Powers, and found 
that they unanimously agreed with him ‘in adopting an opin- 
‘ion essentially identical with that of the Turkish Ministers.’! 
They all signed a memorandum, declaring that ‘upon a ques 
‘tion which so closely touched the freedom of action and the 
‘sovereignty of His Majesty the Sultan, his Highness Reshid 
‘Pasha was the best judge of the course which it was fitting 
‘to take, and that they did not consider themselves authorized 
‘to pronounce an opinion.”> 

Prince Mentschikoff had caused it to be understood that this 
his last demand was only to be accepted by being 
accepted in full. It was rejected ; and on the 21st 
of May the Prince was preparing to depart, when he heard 
that the Porte intended to issue and proclaim a guarantee for 
the exercise of the spiritual rights possessed by the Greek 
Church in Turkey. It was hard for Russia to endure the re- 
sistance which she had encountered, but it was more difficult 
still to hear with any semblance of calmness that the Porte, of 
its own free will, was doing a main part of that which the Em- 
peror Nicholas had urged it to do. This was not tolerable. 
To Russian ears the least utterance about ‘the free will of the 
‘Porte’ instantly conveyed the idea that all was to be ordered 
and governed at the will and pleasure of the English Ambas- 
sador. The thought that the protectorate of the Greek Church 
was not only refused to the Czar, but was now passing quietly 
into the hands of Lord Stratford, was so maddening that Prince 


Tts rejection. 


' «Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 220. As this Draft was Prince Mentschi- 
Koff’ s real ultimatum, it is printed in the Appendix, No. I. 
* Thid., pp. 219, 220, 3 It is clearly disproved. Lbid., pp. 836-8 
. Ibid., p. 220. Seal pid: iat 222, 


Cuap. XI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 123 


Mentschikoff, forgetting or transcending the fact that he had 
formally announced the rupture of his relations with the Porte, 
Final threats OW suffered himself to address a solemn Note to 
of Prince the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in which (basing 
Mentsehiko®: ‘himself upon a theory that the mention of the spir- 
itual might be deemed to derogate from the temporal rights 
of the Church) he announced that any act having the effect 
which this theory attributed to the proposed guarantee, would 
be regarded as ‘ hostile to Russia and her religion.”! Having 
dispatched these last words of threat, he at length 
| went on board and departed. On tlie same day 
the arms of Russia were taken down from the palace of the 
Imperial Embassy. 

Thus ended the ill-omened mission of Prince Mentschikoff. 
Effect of the It had lasted eleven weeks. In that compass of time 
fheaeuter the Emperor Nicholas destroyed the whole repute 
Nicholas. which he had earned by wielding the power of Rus- 
sia for more than a quarter of a century with justice and mod- 
eration toward foreign States.2. But, moreover, in these same 
fatal days the Emperor Nicholas did much to bring his good 
faith into question. The tenor of his previous life makes it 
right to insist that any imputation upon his personal honor 
shall be tested with scrupulous care, but it is hard to escape 
the conviction that during several weeks in the spring of the 
year he was giving to the English Government a series of as- 
surances which misrepresented the instructions given by him 
to Prince Mentschikoff during that same period. Thus, almost 
at the very hour when Count Nesselrode was assuring Sir 
Hamilton Seymour that ‘the adjustment of the difficulties re- 
‘specting the Holy Places would seitle all matters in dispute 
‘between Russia and the Porte,’? Prince Mentschikoff was 
striving to wring from the Porte a secret treaty, depriving the 
Sultan of his control over the Patriarchate of Constantinople, 
and ceding to Russia a virtual protectorate of the Greek Church 
in Turkey, and was enjoining the Turkish Ministers to keep 
this negotiation concealed from the ‘ill-disposed Powers,’ for 
so he called England and France ;* and again, in the very week 
in which the Czar was joining with the English Government 
in a form more than usually solemn in denouncing the practice 


His departure. 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 253. 

* Computed from the Peace of Adrianople in 1829. The reign of Nicho- 
las commenced in 1825. 

* *Kastern Papers,’ part i., p.162. The slight qualification with which 
Count Nesselrode accompanied the assurance, tended to strengthen it by giv- 
ing it greater precision. 4 ¢ Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 108. 


124 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XI. 


of ‘harassing the Porte by overbearing demands, put forward 
‘in a manner humiliating to its independence and its dignity,”} 
he was shaping the angry dispatch which caused Prince Ments 
chikoff to insult the Porte by his peremptory Note of the 5th 
of May. 

But, notwithstanding all this variance between what the 
Czar said and what he did, it must be acknowledged that it 
would be hard to explain his words and his course of action 
by imputing to him a vulgar and rational duplicity, for it was 
plain that the secrecy at which he aimed would be terminated 
by the success of the negotiation; and supposing him to have 
been in possession of his reason, and to have been acting on 
grounds temporal, he could not have imagined that, for the 
sake of extorting a new promise from the Sultan, and giving 
a little more semblance of legality to pretensions which he al- 
ready maintained to be valid, it was politic for him to forfeit 
that reputation for honor which was a main element of his 
greatness and his strength. The dreams of territorial aggran- 
dizement which he imparted to Sir Hamilton Seymour in Jan- 
uary and February had all dissolved before the middle of 
March, and it is vain to say that after that time his actions 
were governed by any rational plan of conquest. Policy re- 
quired that for encroachments against Turkey he should choose 
a time when Europe, engaged in some other strife, might be 
likely to acquiesce; far from doing this, the Czar chose a time 
when the four Powers had nothing else to do than to watch 
and restrain the aggression of Russia. Again, policy required 
that presure upon the Sultan of a hostile kind should be justi- 
fied by narratives of the cruel treatment of the Christians by 
their Turkish masters; yet if any such causes existed for the 
anger of Christendom, the Emperor Nicholas never took the 
pains to make them known to Europe. From first to last his 
loose charges against the Turks for maltreatment of their Chris- 
tian subjects were not only left without proof, but were even 
unsupported by any thing like statements of fact. 

Still, the Czar was not laboring under any general derange- 
ment of mind. The truth seems to be that zeal for his Church 
had made greater inroads upon his moral and intellectual nature 
than was commonly known, and that when he was under the 
stress of religious or rather of ecclesiastic feelings he ceased to 
be politic, and even perhaps ceased to be honest. It was at 
such times that there came upon him that tendency to act in a 

* Memorandum by the Emperor Nicholas confidentially delivered to Sir 


Hamilton Seymour, and dated the 15th April, 1853. ‘ Eastern Papers,’ part 
V., p- 25. . 


Cnap. XI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 125 


spirit of barbaric cunning which was really inconsistent with 
the general tenor of his life. But if it happened that whilst 
his mind was already under one of these spiritual visitations, 
it was farther inflamed by any tidings which roused his old 
antagonism to Sir Stratford Canning, then instantly it was 
wrought into such a state that one must be content to mark 
its fitful and violent impact upon human affairs without under- 
taking to deduce the result from any symmetrical scheme of 
action. 

But, whatever the cause, the fall was great. The polity of 
the Russian State was of such a kind that when the character 
of its monarch stood high, he exalted the empire, and when he 
descended, he drew the empire along with him. In the be- 
ginning of March, the Emperor Nicholas almost oppressed the 
continent of Europe with the weight of his vast power, con- 
joined with moderation and a spirit of austere justice toward 
foreign States. Before the end of May, he stood before the 
world shorn bare of all this moral strength, and having nothing 
left to him except what might be reckoned and set down upon 
paper by an inspector of troops or a surveyor of ships. In less 
than three months, the station of Russia amongst the Powers 
of Europe underwent a great change. 

The English Ambassador remained upon the field of the con- 
Positionin flict. Between the time of his return to Constan- 
whieh, Lord. tinople and the departure of Prince Mentschikoff 
Stratford’s skill : . P 
had placed the there had passed forty-five days. In this period 
ePrice Lord Stratford had brought to a settlement the 
question of the Holy Places, had bafiled all the efforts of the 
Emperor Nicholas to work an inroad upon the sovereign rights 
of the Sultan, and had enforced upon the Turks a firmness so 
indomitable, and a moderation so unwearied, that from the 
hour of his arrival at Constantinople they resisted every claim 
which was fraught with real danger; but always resisted with 
courtesy, and yielded to every demand, however unjust in prin- 
ciple, if it seemed that they could yield with honor and with 
safety. Knowing that, if he left room for doubt whether Rus- 
sia or the Porte were in the right, the controversy would run 
a danger of being decided in favor of the stronger, he provided 
with a keen foresight, and at the cost of having to put a hard 
restraint upon his anger, and even upon his sense of justice, 
that the concessions offered by the Turks should reach beyond 
their just liability: nay, should reach so far beyond it as to 
leave a broad margin between, and make it difficult even for 
any one who inclined toward the strong to deny that Russia 
was committing an outrage upon a weaker State, and was 


126 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XI 


therefore offending against Europe. In truth, he placed the 
Moslem before the world in an attitude of Christian forbear- 
ance sustained by unfailing courage; and in proportion as men 
loved justice and were led by the gentle precepts of the Gos- 
pel, they inclined to the Mahometan Prince who seemed to 
represent their principles, and began to think how best they 
could help him to make a stand against the ferocious Chris- 
tianity of the Czar. In England especially this sentiment was 
kindled, and already it was beginning to gain a hold over the 
policy of the State. Less than three months before, the dis- 
memberment of the Turkish Empire had been thought a. fair 
subject to bring into question, and now the firmness and the 
strange moderation with which the Turks stood resisting the 
demands of their oppressor was drawing the English people 
day by day into a steadfast alliance with the Sultan. 

But if Lord Stratford had succeeded in gaining over to his 
cause the general opinion of Europe, or rather in adapting the 
policy of the Divan to what he knew would be approved by 
the people of the West, he did not neglect to use such means 
as he had for moving the Governments of the four Powers; 
and the concerted action to which he had succeeded in bring- 
ing them on the 21st of May was a beginning of the peaceful 
coercion with which it was fitting that Europe should with- 
Engazements Stand the encroachments of a wrong-doer. But 
contracted by this was not all that was effected by the Diplomatic 
aia transactions of the spring. It can not be concealed 
that, without the solemnity of a treaty, nay, without the knowl- 
edge of Parliament, and perhaps without the knowledge of her 
Prime Minister, England in the course of a few weeks had slided 
into all the responsibility of a defensive alliance with the Sul- 
tan against the Emperor of Russia. It may seem strange that 
this could be, but the truth is that the general scope of a length- 
ened official correspondence is not to be gathered by merely 
learning at intervals the import of each dispatch. Taken sin- 
gly, almost every dispatch composed by a skilled diplomatist 
will be likely to seem wise and moderate, and deserving of a 
complete approval; but if a Statesman goes on approving and 
approving one by one a long series of papers of this sort with- 
out rousing himself to the effort of taking a broader view of 
the transactions which he has separately examined, he may 
find himself entangled in a course of action which he never in- 
tended to adopt. Perhaps this view tends to explain the rea- 
sons which caused a minister whose love of peace was pas- 
sionate and almost fanatical to become gradually and imper- 
ceptibly responsible for a policy leading toward war. Lord 


-Cuar. XL] BROUGHT ON ‘THE WAR. 127 


Aberdeen did not formally renounce his neutral policy of 1828, 
and he did not at this time advise the Queen to conclude any 
treaty for the defense of Turkey, nor ask the judgment of Par- 
liament upon the expediency of taking such a course; but day 
after day and week after week the cabinet-boxes came and 
went, and came and went again, and every day he passed: his 
anxious and inevitable hour and a half at the Foreign Office ; 
and at length it became apparent that the Government of which 
he was the chief had so acted that it could not with honor! 
recede from the duty of defending the home provinces of the 
Sultan against an unprovoked attack by Russia. The advice 
Obligations of a strong Power is highly valued, but it is valued 
theactetgie. for reasons which should make men chary of giving 
ingadvice. it. It is not commonly valued for the sake of its 
mere wisdom, but partly because it is more or less a disclosure 
of policy, and still more because it tends to draw the advising 
State into a line of action corresponding with its counsels. 
England by the voice of her Ambassador (approved from time 
to time by the home Government?) had been advising a weak 
Power to resist a strong one. Counsels of such a kind could 
not but have a grave import. 

The French Emperor had been more careful to keep him- 
self free from engagements with the Porte, but he had long 
ago resolved to seize the coming occasion of acting in concert 
Englandjin With England. And England now became bound. 
Tranee,be, Within three days from Prince Mentschikoff’s de- 
comes engaged parture, France and England were beginning to 
defend the concert resistance to Russia; on the 26th of May 
minions. the Sultan’s refusal of the Russian ultimatum was 
warmly applauded by the English Government, and before the 
end of the month the Foreign Secretary instructed the English 
Ambassador that it was ‘indispensable to take measures for 
‘the protection of the Sultan, and to aid his Highness in revel- 
‘ling any attack that might be made upon his territory ;’? and 
that ‘the use of force was to be resorted to as a last and una- 
‘ voidable resource for the protection of Turkey against an un- 
‘provoked attack and in defense of her independence, which 
‘England,’ as Lord Clarendon declared, ‘was bound to main- 
‘ tain.’4 , 

Lord Clarendon at the same time addressed a dispatch to 
St. Petersburg, setting forth with painful clearness the differ- 
ence between the words and the acts of the Czar, and indig- 

1 So said by Lord Clarendon. ‘Eastern Papers,’ pari i. 


2 ¢Rastern Papers,’ part i., p. 183. 3 24th May. Ibid., p. 182. 
Sripid. pr 197. 


128 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XT, 


nantly requiring to know what was the object which Russia 
had ‘in view, and in what manner and to what extent the do- 
‘minions of the Sultan and the tranquillity of Europe were 
‘threatened.”! 

It was not by any one decisive act or promise, but by the 
The process by tenor of expressions scattered through a long series 
rich Eng- of Dispatches, and by words used from time ‘to time 
bound. in conversations, that England had taken upon her- 
self the Burden of defending the Sultan against the Czar. 
Slowness of atliament was sitting when this momentous en- 
the English gagement was being contracted, and it may be 
Parliament. thought that there was room for questioning wheth- 
er England in concert with France alone, and without first do- 
ing her utmost to obtain the concurrence of the other Power S, 
should good-humoredly take upon herself a duty which was 
rather European than English, and which tended to involve 
her in war. There were eloquent members of the Legislature 
who would have been willing to deprecate such a policy, and 
to moderate and confine its action, but apparently they did not 
understand how England was becoming entangled until about 
nine months afterward, and, either from want of knowledge or 
want of promptitude, they lost the occasion for aiding the 
Crown with their counsels. Indeed, from first to last, the back- 
wardness of the English Parliament in seizing upon the change- 
ful phases of the diplomatic strife was one of the main causes 
of the impending evil, and this was only one of the occasions 
in which it failed in the duty of opportune utterance. When 
the Dispatch of the 31st of May was once on the road to Con- 
stantinople, England stood bound, and all that might be after- 
ward said about it would be criticism rather than counsel. 

So ended one phase of the ancient strife between the Em- 
peror Nicholas and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. Prince Ments- 
chikoff, landing at Odessa, hastened to dispatch to his master 
the best account he could give of the causes of his discomfi- 
ture, and of the evil skill of that Antichrist in stately English 
form whom Heaven was permitting for a while to triumph 
over the Czar and his Church. 

Lord Stratford reaped the fruit of his toil and of the long 
Powersin.  ¢dured pain of encountering violence with moder- 
trusted toLord ation. All his acts were approved by the Govern- 
Stratford. ment, and, so far as they were known and under- 
- stood, by the bulk of his countrymen at home. And now, 
when he paced the shady gardens, where often he had put 


1 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 200. 


Cuap. XII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 129 


upon his anger a difficult restraint, he could look with calm joy 
to the headland where the Straits opened out into the Euxine, 
for he knew that the Governments of the Western Powers, 
supporting his every word, and even overstepping his more 
sober policy, were coming forward to stand between Russia 
and her prey. The fleet at Malta was to be moved when and 
- whither he chose, and, even to the length of war, the Admiral 
was ordered to obey any requisitions made to him by the Am- 
bassador.! A few days later, the Governments of Paris and 
London, fearing the consequence of delay, ordered the fleets to 
move up at once to the neighborhood of the Dardanelles.2. The 
power to choose between peace and war went from out of the 
Courts of Paris and London and passed to Constantinople. 
Lord Stratford was worthy of this trust; for being firm, and 
supplied with full knowledge, and having power by his own 
mere ascendency to enforce moderation upon the Turks, and 
to forbid panic and even to keep down tumult, he was able to 
be very chary in the display of force, and to be more frugal 
than the Government at home in using or engaging the power 
of the English Queen. He remained on the ground. Still, as 
before, he kept down the home dangers which threatened the 
Ottoman State. Still, as before, he obliged the Turks to de- 
serve the good will of Europe; but now besides, with the arm 
of the flesh, and no longer with the mere fencing of words, he 
was there to defend their capital from the gathered rage of 
the Czar. In truth, at this time he bore much of the weight 
of empire. Intrusted with the chief prerogative of kings, and 
living all his time at Therapia, close over the gates of the Bos- 
phorus, he seemed to stand guard against the North and to 
answer for the safety of his charge. 


CHAPTER XII. 


Tue mere sensation of being at strife with the English Am- 
Rage ofthe’ bassador at Constantinople had kindled in the bo- 
weet som of the Emperor Nicholas a rage so fierce as to 
drive him beyond the bounds of policy; but when he came to 
know the details of the struggle, and to see how at every step 
his Ambassador had been encountered, and, finally, when he 
heard (for that was the maddening thought) that, by counsels 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p.199. 2 Pp. 210, 225. 
os. 


130 ‘TRANSACTIONS WHICH > [Cuar. XII. 


always obeyed, Lord Stratford was calmly exercising a pro- 
tectorate of all the Churches in Turkey, including the very 
Church of him the Czar, him the Father, him the Pontiff of 
Kastern Christendom, he was wrought into such a condition 
of mind that his fury broke away from the restraint of even 
the very pride which begot it. Pride counseled the calm use 
of force, an order to the Admiral at Sebastopol, the silent march 
of battalions. But the Czar had so lost the control of his an- 
ger, that every where, and to all who would look upon the 
sight, he showed the wounds inflicted upon him by his hated 
adversary. ‘He addressed,’ said Lord Clarendon, ‘to the dif- 
‘ferent Courts of Europe unmeasured complaints of Lord Strat- 
‘ford. To him and to him alone he attributed the failure of 
‘Prince Mentschikoff’s mission.’! ‘An incurable mistrust, a 
‘vehement activity,’ said Count Nesselrode,? ‘had character- 
‘ized the whole of Lord Stratford’s conduct during the latter 
‘part of the negotiation.’ 7 

Even in formal dispatches the Czar caused his Minister to 
speak as though there were absolutely no government at Con- 
stantinople except the mere will of Lord. Stratford. ‘The En- 
‘elish Ambassador,’ Count Nesselrode said, ‘ persisted in re- 
‘fusing us any kind of guarantee ;? and then the Count went 
on to picture the Turkish Ministers as prostrate before the 
English Ambassador, and vainly entreating him to let them 
yield to Russia. ‘Reshid Pasha,’ said he, ‘struck with the 
‘dangers which the departure of our Legation might entail 
‘upon the Porte, earnestly conjured the British Ambassador 
‘not to oppose the acceptance of the Note drawn up by Prince 
‘Mentschikoff, but Lord Redcliffe prevented its acceptance by 
‘declaring that the Note was equivalent to a treaty, and was 
‘inadmissible.* This last story, it has been seen, was the 
work of mere fiction,? but in the Czar Nicholas, as well as in 
Prince Mentschikoff, there were remains of the Oriental na- 
ture which made him ready to believe in the boundless power 
of a mortal, and he seems to have received without question 
the fables with which the Eastern mind was portraying the 
unbending, implacable Eltchi. It was vain to show a mon- 
arch, thus wrought to anger, that the difference between him 
and the terrible Ambassador lay simply in the fact that the 
one was in the wrong and the other.in the right. The thought 
of this only made the discomfiture more bitter. In the eyes 
of the Czar, Lord Stratford’s way of keeping himself eternally 
in the right and eternally moderate was the mere contrivance, 

' ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 268. ? Tbid., p. 243. 
° This is proved very clearly. Ibid., p. 336, et seq. 


Cuar. XII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 131 


the mere inverted Jesuitism of a man resolved to do good in 
order that evil might come; resolved to be forbearing and 
just for the sake of doing a harm to the Church, It was S plain 
that, to assuage the torment which the Czar was enduring, the 
remedy was action: yet, strange to say, this disturber of En- 
rope, who seemed to pass his life in preparing soldiery, was 
not at all ready for a war, even against the Sultan alone. His 
preparations had been stopped in the beginning of March, and 
the movements which his troops had been making in Bessara- 
bia were movements in the nature of threats. He wished to 
do some signal act of violence without plunging into war. 
The disposition of the Russian forces on the banks of the 
The Danubian Pruth had long been breeding rumors that the 
Principalities. Hmperor Nicholas meditated an occupation of the 
Principalities called Wallachia and Moldavia. These prov- 
inces formed a part of the Ottoman dominions in Europe, but 
they were held by the Sultan under arrangements which mod- 
ified their subjection to the Porte, and gave them the charac- 
ter of tributary States. Each of them was governed by a 
prince called a Hospodar, who received his investiture at Con- 
stantinople, but the Sultan was precluded by treaty from al- 
most all interference with the internal government of the prov- 
inces, and was even debarred the right ‘of sending any soldiery 
into their territories. Russia, on the other hand, had acquired 
over these provinces a species of protectorate, and, in the event 
of their being disturbed by internal anarchy, she had power 
to aid in repressing the disorder by military occupation. ‘This 
contingency had not occurred in either of the provinces; but 
the anomalous form of their political existence caused the Em: 
TheCzars  Peror Nicholas to imagine that, by occupying them 
scheme for oc- With a military force ‘and professing to hold them 
eupying them. os a pledge, he could find for himself a middle 
course betwixt peace and war; and the thought was welcome 
to him, because, being angry and irresolute, he had been pain- 
fully driven to and fro, and was glad to compound with his 
passion. 
___ On the 31st of May, Count Nesselrode addressed a letter to 
Reshid Pasha, urging the Porte to accept without variation 
the draught of the Note submitted to it by Prince Mentschi- 
koff; and announcing that, if the Porte should fail to do this 
within a period of eieht days, the Russian army within a few 
weeks would cross the frontier in order to obtain ‘by force 
‘ but. without war’ that which the Porte should decline to give 
up of its own accord. It was afterward explained that this 
plan of resorting to violence without war was to be carried 


182 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuap. XII. 


into effect by occupying the Danubian Principalities and hold- 
ing them as a security for the Sultan’s compliance. 

But in the second week of June the Dispatch which brought 
to the Sultan a virtual alliance with England was already at 
Constantinople, and the English fleet was coming up from Mal- 
ta to the mouth of the Dardanelles, under orders to obey the 
word of the English Ambassador. Before the moment came 
for dispatching an answer to Count Nesselrode’s summons, 
both the French and the English fleets were at anchor close 
outside the Straits in waters called Besica Bay. Thus sup- 
ported, the Porte at once refused to give Russia the Note de- 
manded; but under Lord Stratford’s counsel it did this in 
terms of deferential courtesy, and in a way which left open a 
door to future negotiation. | 

In all the capitals of the five great Powers, as well as at Con- 
Efforts to of. Stantinople, great efforts were made to bring about 
fect an accom- an accommodation, and it is certain that at inter- 
modation. vals, if not continually, the Emperor Nicholas sought 
the means of retreating without ridicule from the ground on 
which his violence had placed him. It might seem that this 
was a condition of things in which diplomacy ought to have 
been able to act with effect; but it is hard for any one ac- 
quainted with the Dispatches to say that the Statesmen in- 
trusted with the duty of laboring for this end were wanting in 
energy or in skill. It was the Czar’s ancient hatred of Sir 
Stratford Canning which defied the healing art. What Nich- 
olas wanted was to be able to force upon the Porte some meas- 
ure which was keenly disapproved by Lord Stratford; and if 
it could have been shown that the English Ambassador had 
led the Turks into an untenable ground, there would have been 
an opportunity of giving the Czar this gratification ; but Lord 
Stratford’s moderation had been so firmly maintained, his sight 
had been always so clear and just, and his advice had gone so 
close to the edge of what could safely be conceded by the 
Turks, that (without doing a gross wrong to the Sultan) it was 
hardly possible to contrive any way of giving the Czar a sem- 
blance of triumph over the English Ambassador. 

From this time and thenceforth down to the final rupture 
Defective rep- between Russia and the Western Powers, there was 
resentation of “a cause of evil at work which was every day tend- 
tria,and Prus- ing to draw the Czar-on into danger. Austria, 
cin at the Prussia, and France were unfitly represented at St. 
Petersburg Petersburg. In order to understand the nature of 
this evil, it must be remembered that in the reign of Nicholas 
the socicty of the Russian capital was what in the last century 


Cuap. XII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. ; 133 


used to go by the name of a‘ Court.’ It was a mere group of 
men and women, gathered always around one centre, bending 
always their eyes on one man, and striving to divine his will. 
Moreover the worshipers were always watching to see who 
was in favor and who was in disgrace ;- and whoever was seen 
to be in favor with the Czar was brought into favor with all; 
and whoever was believed to have incurred the Czar’s dis- 
pleasure was immediately forced to perceive that he had be- 
come displeasing to the rest of his fellow-creatures. Strange 
to say, the members of the diplomatic body were not exempt 
from these vicissitudes: if a foreign envoy felt obliged to ofter 
resistance to the imperial will, his life was made cold and 
gloomy to him; and, on the other hand, he was sure to be well 
caressed if he chose to cringe to the Czar. This condition of 
society made it a matter of great moment for foreign States to 
be represented at St. Petersburg by men of high spirit, and en- 
dued with some strength of will. Unhappily for the peace of 
Europe, France was represented at St. Petersburg by M. Cas- 
telbajac, Austria by Count Mensdorf, and Prussia by Colonel 
Rochow; and at a time when the Governments which they 
professed to represent were laboring to repress the violence 
of Russia by a policy of almost hostile resistance, these three 
men had suffered themselves to become the mere courtiers of 
the Czar.} 

Sir Hamilton Seymour alone held language corresponding 
with the disapproval which the acts of the Czar were exciting 
in Central Europe, as well as in France and England. He 
alone represented at St. Petersburg the judgment of the four 
Powers. From the moment when the occupation of the Prin- 
cipalities was first threatened, he always treated it as an act 
perilous to the tranquillity of Europe, and always declined to 
give any measure of the extent to which it was likely to affect 
the relations between Russia and England. In using this 
wholesome language he was left without support from any of 
his colleagues. 

Of course, in a literal way, the representatives of Austria, 
Prussia, and France obeyed their orders, and remonstrated 
when they were directed to do so; but the Czar was so prone | 
to believe what he wished to be true, that diplomatists who 
were forced to make painful communications to his Govern- 
ment could easily do a great deal to blunt the edge of their in- 
structions. So, although in Europe the Czar was isolated, yet 


1 It is conceived that the facts which will be hereafter stated in connec- 
tion with the names of these men are alone sufficient to justify the statement 
in the text. 


134 TRANSACTIONS WHICH - [Cuap. XII. 


in Europe, as represented at St. Petersburg, the true order of. 
things was reversed. There it was Sir Hamilton Seymour who 
stood alone. More than this, it was believed at St. Petersburg 
that the delinquency of M. Castelbajac often went beyond mere 
inaction, and that when the Czar was pained and discouraged 
by the reserve or the warning language of the Queen’s repre- 
sentative, he was accustomed to turn for solace to the com- 
plaisant Frenchman, who was always ready to assure him that 
Sir Hamilton Seymour’s grave tone was the sheer whim of an 
obstinate Englishman. | 

The Emperor Nicholas had laid down for himself a rule which 
The Czar's re. Was always to guide his conduct upon the Eastern 
Hane ips (uestion, and it seems to be certain that, at this 
cence of En- time, even in his most angry moments, he intended 
gland. to cling to his resolve. What he had determined 
was, that no temptation should draw him into hostile conflict 
with England. _He did not know that already he was break- 
ing away from England, and rapidly going adrift. Persisting 
in the belief that the opposition which he had been encounter- 
ing at Constantinople was the work of the English Ambassa- 
dor, and of him alone, or at worst of the Foreign Office, he re- 
fused to accept the conviction that he was falling out with the 
English people, or even with the English Government. It was 
in vain that Lord Clarendon, in words as clear as day, disclosed 
the anger and the growing determination of the Cabinet. It 
was in vain that by ¢ grave words and by pregnant reserve Sir 
Hamilton Seymour strove to warn the Czar of the danger which 
he was bringing upon his relations with England. The Czar 
imagined that he knew better. ‘ My dear Sir ‘Hamilton, ’ Count 
Nesselrode seemed to s say, ‘you have lived away from your 
‘country so long, that, forgive me, you do not know its condi- 
‘tion and temper. We do. We have studied it. Your For- 
‘eign Office speaks as if we did not know that England has 
‘her weak point. My dear Sir Hamilton, we have mastered 
‘the whole subject of the “School of Manchester.” Certainly 
‘it cost us some trouble, but we have now made out the dif- 
‘ference between a “ Meeting” on a Sunday morning and a 
‘*¢ Meeting” on a Monday night. Nothing escapes us. We 
‘comprehend the Society of Friends. Pardon me, Sir Hamil- 
‘ton, for saying so, but your country is notor iously ‘engaged j in 

‘ecommerce, With that we shall not interfere.’ 

In truth, the Czar’s theory was that the foreign policy of 
the English Government was dictated by the people, and that 
the people loved money, and for the sake of money loved peace. 
In other words, he thought that the English nation had under- 


Cuap. XII. | BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 185 


gone what historians term ‘corruption.’ As far as he could 
make out, the vast expanse of men and women which present- 
ed itself to his imagination under the name of ‘ the people’ was 
the same sort of thing as the crowd which went to hear a fierce 
speech against princes, and statesmen, and parliaments, and ar- 
mies, and navies, and taxes. He also thought that the cheers 
which this crowd uttered at the end of sentences denouncing 
war were proof of a settled determination to prevent any Gov, ‘ 
ernment from ever again breaking the peace without stringent 
reasons. A deeper ‘knowledge would have taught him that 
what the crowd applauded was—not the mere doctrine, but— 
the pure racy strenuous English, and the animating ferocity of 
the speaker ; for, in speeches of this kind, praises of peace were 
always blended with rough attacks upon public men; and 
therefore, to a shallow observ er, the hearers might seem ‘to be 
lifting up their voices for peace and good- will among men, 
when in reality they were only acknowledging the pleasantness 
of the sensation which is produced by heari ing good invective. 
A prince of the Russian Emperor’s breed might have known 
that, even if it be given in praise or in joy, the ‘hurrah’ of a 
northern people has in it a sound of conflict. . What it nega- 
tives and forbids is peace and rest. His battalions were des- 
tined to hear it some day, to know its import, and to blend it 
long afterward with recollections of mist and slaughter, and 
the breaking strength of Russia. But to the mind of the Czar 
at this time the cheering which greeted the thin phantom of 
the ‘ Peace Party’ imported a determination of the English peo- 
ple to abdicate their place in Europe; and, in pr oportion as 
this belief fixed its hold upon his mind, the tranquillity of the 
world was brought into danger. 

Another unhappy circumstance tended to keep the Czar in 
his fatal error. Lord Aberdeen was the Prime Minister. He 
was a pure and upright statesman, and it can be said that the 
more closely he was known the more he was honored; for his 
friends always saw in him higher qualities than he was able to 
disclose to the general world by writing, or by speech, or by 
action. It was his lot to do much toward bringing upon his 
country a great calamity. He drew down war by suffering 
himself to have an undue horror of it. With good and tr uly 
peaceful intentions, he was every day breaking: down one of 
the surest of the safeguards which protected the peace of Eu- 
rope. This he did by the dangerous language which he suf- 
fered himself to hold almost down to. the time of Baron Brun- 
now’s departure from London. If judges were to declare their 
horror of justice, and make it appear that they would be likely 


136 TRANSACTIONS WHICH —s[Ctar. XI. 


to shrink from the duty of passing sentence on one of their 
. erring fellow-creatures, they would invite the world to pillage 
and murder; but they would be committing a fault less grave 
than that of which Lord Aberdeen was guilty. He was chief 
of the Government, intrusted with the forces of the State. To 
be chary of the use of means so puissant for good and for evil 
is one of the most solemn charges that can be cast upon man ; 
but for a ruler to give out that the sword of the State will be 
in his hands a thing loathed and cast aside, is to be guilty of a 
dereliction of duty fraught with instant danger. To all who 
would listen, Lord Aberdeen used to say that he abhorred the 
very thought of war, and that he was sure it would not and 
could not occur. He caused men to believe that, except for 
weighty and solemn cause, no war would be undertaken with 
his concurrence. Relying on a Prime Minister’s words, the 
Emperor Nicholas felt certain that Lord Aberdeen would not 
carry England into a war for the sake of a difference between 
the wording of a Note demanded by Prince Mentschikoff, and 
the wording of a Note proposed by the Turks. It is true that 
Baron Brunnow had the sagacity to understand that imprudent 
and timid language, though coming from the lips of a Prime 
Minister, would not necessarily be binding upon the high-spir- 
ited people of England, and he, no doubt, warned his master 
accordingly, even at the time when he was conveying to him 
Lord Aberdeen’s words of peace; but it was so delightful to 
the Czar to remain under the impression produced by the 
language of the English Prime Minister, and, moreover, this 
language was so closely in harmony with the apparent feel- 
ings of the active little crowd which he had mistaken for ‘the 
‘Knglish people,’ that he could not or would not forego his 
illusion. 

It is believed that the errors of Lord Aberdeen did not end 
here. In a conversation between Lord Clarendon and Baron 
Brunnow, our Foreign Secretary, they say, spoke a plain firm 
sentence, disclosing the dangers which the occupation of the 
Principalities would bring upon the relations between Russia 
and England. The wholesome words were flying to St. Peters- - 
burg. They would have destroyed the Czar’s illusion, and they 
therefore bid fair to preserve the peace of Europe; but when 
Lord Aberdeen came to know what had been uttered, he in- 
sisted, they say, and insisted with effect, that Baron Brunnow 
should be requested to consider Lord Clarendon’s words as 
unspoken. Of course, after a fatal revocation like this, it would 
be hard indeed to convince the Czar that his encroachment was 
provoking the grave resistance of England. 


Citar. XII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 137 


The Emperor Nicholas was alone in his accustomed writing- 
Orders for the 100m in the Palace of Czarskoe Selo, when he came 
a eT to the resolve which followed upon the discomfi- 
ties. ture of Prince Mentschikoff. He took no counsel. 
He rang a bell. Presently an officer of his staff stood before 
him. ‘To him he gave his orders for the occupation of the 
Principalities. Afterward he told Count Orloff what he had 
done. Count Orloff became grave and said,‘This is war” The 
Czar was surprised to hear that the Count took so gloomy a 
view. He was sure that no country would stir against him 
without the concurrence of England, and he was certain that 
because of her Peace Party, her traders and her Prime Minis- 
ter, it was impossible for England to move. 

It was thus that by rashness and want of moderation men 
truly attached to the cause of peace were encouraging the 
wrong-doer, and rapidly brmging upon Europe the calamity 
which they most abhorred. 

On the 2nd of July, the Emperor Nicholas caused his forces 
The Pruth to pass the Pruth, and laid hold of the two Princi- 


passed. ais : 7 , So ARS 
Russian Mani- Palities. On the following day a manifesto was 
festo. read in the churches of All the Russias.) ‘It is 


‘known,’ said the Czar, ‘to all our faithful subjects, that the 
‘defense of the orthodox religion was from time immemorial 
‘the vow of our glorious forefathers. From the time that it 

‘pleased Providence to intrust to us our hereditary throne, the 
‘defense of these holy obligations inseparable from it was the 
‘constant object of our solicitude and care; and these, based 
‘on the glorious treaty of IKainardji, confirmed by other solemn 
-*treaties, were ever directed to insure the inviolability of the 
‘orthodox Church. But to our great grief, recently in despite 
‘of our efforts to defend the inviolability of the rights and 
‘privileges of our orthodox Church, various arbitrary acts of 
‘the Porte have infringed these rights, and threaten at last the 
‘complete overthrow of the long-perpetuated order so dear to 
‘orthodoxy. Having exhausted all persuasion, we have found 
‘it needful to advance our armies into the Danubian Princi- 
‘palities, in order to show the Ottoman Porte to what its ob- 
‘stinacy may lead. But even now we have not the intention © 
‘to commence war. By the occupation of the Principalities 
‘we desire to have such a security as will insure us the resto- 
‘ration of our rights. It is not conquest that we seek; Russia 
‘needs it not; we seek satisfaction for a just right so clearly 
‘infringed. We are ready even now to arrest the movement 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 357. 


138 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIII: 


‘of our armies, if the Ottoman Porte will bind itself solemnly 
‘to observe the inviolability of the orthodox Church. But if 
‘blindness and obstinacy decide for the contrary, then, calling 
‘God to our aid, we shall leave the decision of the struggle to 
‘Him, and in full confidence in His omnipotent right hand, we 
‘shall march forward for the orthodox Church.”! 

By declaring that his military occupation of these-provinces 
Course taken WaAS not an act of war, the Emperor Nicholas did 
by the Sultan. not escape from any part of the responsibility nat- 
urally attaching to the invasion of a neighbor’s territory, and 
vet, by making this announcement, he committed the error of 
enabling the Porte to choose its own time for the final rupture. 
The Sultan was advised by Lord Stratford, and afterward by 
the Home Governments of the Western Powers, that, although 
he was entitled, if he chose, to look upon the seizure of the 
tributary provinces as a clear invasion of his territory, he was 
not obliged to treat it as an act which placed him at war, and 
that for the moment it was wise for him to hold back. Upon 
this counsel the Sultan acted, and in truth the latitude which 
it gave him was highly convenient, because he was ill prepared 
for an immediate encounter. Therefore, without yet going toa 
rupture, the Turkish Government exerted itself to make ready 
for war. In States religiously constituted, the preparation for 
war is begun by preaching it, and now in Europe, in Asia, and 
Religions char. 22 Africa, wherever there were Turkish dominions, 
acter ofthe the Moslems were called to arms by a truculent 
threatened war. course of sermons. In the churches of Russia there 
was a like appeal to the piety of the multitude. Of course the 
members of the two disputing Governments were much under. 
the influence of temporal motives, but by the people of both 
Empires the war now believed to be impending was regarded 
as a war for Religion. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


Tuer Czar had no sooner uttered his threat to occupy the 
Fffe-s ofthe Principalities than he found himself met by the 
MaaN taopean UNANIMOUS disapproval of the other great Powers 
Powers. of Europe. Nor was this a barren expression of 
opinion. From the time of the accomplishment of Count Lein- 


ingen’s mission, Austria had never ceased to declare her adhe- 


} “astern Papers,’ part i., p. 823. 


Cuar. XULJ BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 139 


sion to her accustomed policy, and the moment that she saw 
herself endangered by the Czar’s determination to send troops 
into Wallachia and Moldavia, she became, as it was her inter- 
est and her duty to be, a resolute opponent of Russia. And 
her resistance was of more value than that of any other Pow- 
er, because she was so placed in reference to the Principalities 
that at any moment and without any very hard effort she 
could make her will the law. Of course the Czar might resent 
Its effect upon the interference of Austria and declare war against 
ae her, but in such a case he would necessarily place 
the scene of hostilities upon another part of her frontier. It 
was not possible for him with common prudence to wind round 
the frontier of the Austrian Empire and attempt to keep troops 
in Wallachia if he were liable to attack from Transylvania and 
the Banat. 

Clearly then it rested with Austria to prevent or redress the | 
threatened outrage. Her resolution was never doubtful. Be-~ 
fore the end of May, Count Buol represented at St. Petersburg 
the danger of the proceedings adopted by Prince Mentschi- 
koff,! and on the 17th of June he declared that he considered 
himself as ‘ entirely united’ with England in her policy toward 
the Turkish Empire, that he regarded ‘the maintenance of its 
‘independence and integrity as of the most essential import- 
‘ance to the best interests of Austria,’ and that he would em- 
ploy all the ‘means in his power to effect that object.? He 
promised that he would take no engagement with Russia not 
to oppose her ‘ with arms,’ and he added that, ‘should he be 
‘called upon to carry out an armed intervention on the fron- 
‘tiers, it would be in support of the authority and independ- 
‘ence of the Sultan.” 

The opinion of Prussia was scarcely less decided. On the 
30th of May Lord Bloomfield was able to report 
that the impression made upon the Government of 
Berlin by the last reports from Turkey was ‘ most unfavorable 
‘to the Russian Government,’ and Baron Manteuffel declared 
that Prince Mentschikoff had gone far beyond every thing that 
the Prussian Government had been given to expect, and he 
could hardly believe but that the Prince would be disavowed. 
Three days later the Prussian Government conveyed this im- 
pression to the Court of St. Petersburg,* and on the 7th Lord 
Clarendon expressed his satisfaction at the views taken and the 
course of the policy indicated both by the Court of Berlin and 
the Court of Vienna.® 

! ¢Hastern Papers,’ part i., p. 224. * Thyid., p20 1; * Tbhid., p. 223. 

*Tbid., p. 227. ® Ibid., p. 230, 


Upon Prussia. 


140 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIIL 


This was the effect produced by the threat contained in 
Effect produced Count Nesselrode’s summons; but when the inva- 
Py the actuate Sion of the Principalities took place and came to be 
Principalities. Known in Europe, it quickly appeared that the un- 
easiness excited by the actual occurrence of the event was 
more than proportioned to that which sprang from the mere 
expectation of it. In Austria the uneasiness of the 
Government was so great that it dissolved the close 
relations of friendship lately subsisting between the Courts of 
Petersburg and Vienna; and within three days from the time 
when Russia crossed the Pruth, Count Buol, abandoning the 
notion of ‘acting singly,’ which had been entertained some 
days before,' began to lay the foundations of a league well fit- 
ted to repr ess the Czar’s encroachment without plunging Eu- 
rope in war. 

‘The entry of the Russian troops into the Principalities,’ 
wrote Lord Westmoreland to the English Secretary of State, 

‘is looked upon with the greatest possible regret, and Iam re- 

‘quested by Count .Buol to state this to your ‘Lordship, as also 
‘to announce to you his intention immediately to convey this 
‘feeling to the Russian Cabinet, together with the expression 
‘of the disappointment he has felt at the sudden adoption of 
‘this measure while there still existed the hope of an arrange- 
‘ment at Constantinople. Connt Buol expressed his entire 
‘satisfaction with the language your Lordship had held to 
‘ Count Colloredo, agreeing as he does with the policy you rec- 

‘ommend, and with the necessity which would arise, in case 
‘the invasion of the Principalities took place, of concerting 
‘measures among the Powers parties to the treaties of 1841 
‘with the view of obtaining from the Russian Cabinet the most 
‘distinct declarations as to the objects of that movement and 
‘the term which would be fixed for its duration.”? 

On the other hand, the Governments of France and Eng- 
In France and land, with less cause for anxiety about countries so 
Hogiasd. remote as the provinces of the lower Danube, were 
angrily impatient of the Czar’s intrusion. 

Pr ussia, hitherto supposed to be hardly capable of differing 
with the Emperor Nicholas, did not fear to express 
her disapproval in decisive terms, and the Cabinet 
of Berlin instructed the King’s Envoy at Constantinople to 

‘unite cordially’ with the representatives of Austria, France, 
and England.3 

In short, the attitude of Europe toward the Russian Empe- 


In Austria. 


In Prussia. 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part i., p. 320. 2 Thid., p. 356. 3 Ibid., p. 355. 


Cnar. XU] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 141 


Attitude of TOY Was exactly that which a lover of peace and of 
Europe gener- Order might desire to witness; for the wrong-doer 
any; was left without an ally in the world, and was re- 
sisted by the four great Powers with the assent of the other 
Concord of the States of Hurope. » It was plain, moreover, that this 
four Powers. yesistance would not evaporate in mere remon- 
strance or protest ; for, if Austria was the country most endan- 
gered by the seizure of the Principalities, she was also the 
Power which could most easily extirpate the evil, because, 
Their means Whenever she chose, she could fall upon the flank 
of repression. and rear of the Russian invaders by issuing through 
the passes of the Eastern Carpathian range, or the frontier 
which touched the Banat. Moreover, France and England, 
by bringing their fleets into the Levant, by causing them to 
approach the Dardanelles, by passing the Straits, by anchor- 
ing in the Golden Horn, by ascending the Bosphorus, by cruis- 
ing in the Euxine, and finally by interdicting the Russian flag 
from its waters, could always inflict a graduated torture upon 
the Czar, and (even without going to the*extremity of war) 
could make it impossible that the indignation of Europe should 
remain unheeded. 

The concord of the States opposing the Czar’s encroachment 
Their joint Was already so well perfected that, on the very day! 
— when the Russian advance-guard crossed the Pruth, 
the representatives of the four Powers, assembled in Confer- 
ence, determined to address to Russia a collective Note press- 
ing the Czar to put his claims against Turkey in conformity 
with the sovereign rights of the Sultan. Here was the very 
principle for which France and England had been contending ; 
Importance of 2nd it was obvious that if this concerted action of 
maintaining ~~ the four Powers should last, it would insure peace ; 
between the for, in the first place, any resistance to their united 
four Powers. will would be hopeless, and, on the other hand, a 
' Prince whose spirit rebelled against the idea of yielding to 
States which he looked upon as adversaries might gracefully 
give way to the award of assembled Europe. In short, the 
four Powers could coerce without making war; and the busi- 
“ness of a statesman who sought to maintain the peace and 
good order of Europe was to keep them united, taking care 
that no mere shades of difference should part them, and that 
nothing short of a violent and irreconcilable change on the 
part of one or more of the Powers should dissolve a confeder- 
acy which promised to insure the continuance of peace and a 
speedy enforcement of justice. 


‘ 2nd July, 1853. 


142 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap, XIV. 


How came it to happen that in the midst of all this harmony 
there supervened a policy which discarded the principle of a 
peaceful coercion applied by the whole of the remonstrant 
Powers, and raised up in its stead a threatening alliance which 
was powerful enough to wage a bloody and successful war, 
but was without that more wholesome measure of strength 
which can enforce justice without inflicting humiliation, and 
without resort to arms? How came it to happen that within 
six days from the date of the collective Note, and without the 
intervening occurrence of any new event, the concert of the 
four Powers was suddenly superseded and paralyzed by the 
announcement of a separate understanding between two of 
them ? 

It was not for reasons of State that by one of the high con- 
tracting parties this evil course was designed; and in order to 
see how it came to be possible that the vast interests of Eu- 
rope should be set aside in favor of mere personal objects, it 
will presently be necessary to contract the field of vision, and, 
going back to the winter of 1851, to glance at the operations 
of a small knot of middle-aged men who were pushing their 
fortunes in Paris. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


In the beginning of the winter of 1851 France was still a 
State ofthe republic; but the Constitution of 1848 had struck 
french Repub no root. There was a feeling that the country had 
ber, 1851, been surprised and coerced into the act of declaring 
itself a republic, and that a monarchical system of government 
was the only one adapted for France. The sense of instability 
which sprang from this belief was connected with an agonizing 
dread of insurrections like those which forty months before 
had filled the streets of Paris with scenes of bloodshed. More- 
over, to those who watched and feared, it seemed that the shad- 
ow on the dial was moving on with a terrible steadiness to the 
hour when a return to anarchy was, as it were, pre-ordained 
by law; for the Constitution required that a new President 
should be chosen in the spring of the following year, and the 
French, being by nature of a keen and anxious temperament, 
can not endure that lasting pressure upon the nerves which is 
inflicted by a long impending danger. Their impulse under 
such trials is to rush forward, or to run back, and what they 


-CuHap. XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 143 


are least inclined to do is to stand still and be calm, or make a 
steady move to the front. 

In general, France thought it best that, notwithstanding the 
Rule of the Constitution which stood in the way, the then Pres- 
ident should be quietly re-elected; and a large majority of the 
Assembly, faithfully representing this opinion, had come to a 
vote which sought to give it effect; but their desire was baf- 
fled by an unwise provision of the Republican Charter which 
had laid it down that no constitutional change should take 
place without the sanction of three fourths of the Assembly. 
By this clumsy bar the action of the State system was hamper- 
ed, and many whose minds generally inclined them to respect 
legality were forced to acknowledge that the Constitution 
wanted a wrench. Still, the republic had long been free from 
serious outbreak. The law was obeyed; and indeed the de- 
termination to maintain order at all sacrifices was so strong, 
that, even upon somewhat slight foundation, the President had 
been intrusted with power to place under martial law any dis- 
tricts in which disturbances seemed likely to occur. The strug- 
eles which went on in the Chamber, though they were unsight- 
ly in the eyes of military men and of those who Tove the de- 
-cisiveness and consistency of despotism, were rather signs of 
healthy political action than of danger to the State. It is not 
true, as was afterward pretended, that the Executive was wick- 
‘edly or perversely thwarted either by the votes of the Assem- 
bly or by the speeches of its members; still less is it true that 
the representative body was engaged in hatching plots against 
the President; and although the army, remembering the hu- 
miliations of 1848, was in ill humor with the people, and was 
willing upon any fit occasion to act against them, there was 
no general officer of any repute who would consent to fire a 
shot without what French Commanders deemed to be the 
one Jawful warrant for action—an order from the Minister of 
War. 

But the President of the republic was Prince Charles Louis 
Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the statutory heir of the first 
Bonaparte. French Emperor.’ The election which made him 
the chief of the State had been conducted with perfect fair- 
ness, and since it happened that in former years he had twice 
engaged in enterprises which aimed at the throne of France, 
he had good right to infer that the millions of citizens who 
elected him into the Presidency were willing to use his ambi- 
tion as a means of restoring to France a monarchical form of 
government. 

+ 4. e. by the Senatus-Consulte of 1804. 


144 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuav. XIV. 


But if he had been open in disclosing the ambition which 
was almost cast upon him by the circumstances of his birth, he 
had been as successful as the first Brutus in passing for a man 
of a poor intellect. Both in France and in England at that 
time men in general imagined him to be dull. When he talked, 
the flow of his ideas was sluggish: his features were opaque ; 
and after years of dreary studies, the writings evolved by his 
thoughtful, long-pondering mind had not shed much light on 
the world. Even the strange ventures in which he had en- 
gaged had failed to win toward him the interest which com- 
monly attaches to enterprise. People in London who were 
fond of having gatherings of celebrated characters never used 
to present him to their friends as a serious pretender to a 
throne, but rather as though he were a balloon-man, who had 
twice had a fall from the skies, and was still in some measure 
alive. Yet the more men knew him in England, the more they 
liked him. He entered into English pursuits and rode fairly 
to hounds. He was friendly, social, good-humored, and willing 
enough to talk freely about his views upon the throne of France. 
The sayings he uttered about his ‘destiny’ were addressed (ap- 
parently as a matter of policy) to casual acquaintance, but to 
his intimate friends he used the language of a calculating and 
practical aspirant to Empire. 

The opinion which men had formed of his ability in the pe- 
riod of exile was not much altered by his return to France; for 
in the Assembly his apparent want of mental power caused 
the world to regard him as harmless, and in the chair of the 
President he commonly seemed to be torpid. But there were 
always a few who believed in his capacity, and observant men 
had latterly remarked that from time to time there appeared a 
State Paper, understood to be the work of the President, which 
teemed with thought, and which showed that the writer, stand- 
ing solitary and apart from the gregarious nation of which he 
was the chief, was able to contemplate it as something exter- 
nal to himself. His long, endless study of the mind of the first 
Napoleon had caused him to adopt and imitate the Emperor’s 
habit of looking down upon the French people and treating 
the mighty nation as a substance to be studied and controlled 
by a foreign brain. Indeed, during the periods of his imprison- 
ment and of his exile, the relations between him and the France 
of his studies were very like the relations between an anato- . 
mist and a corpse. He lectured upon it; he dissected its fibres ; 
he explained its functions; he showed how beautifully Nature 
in her infinite wisdom had adapted it to the service of the Bo- 
napartes; and how, without the fostering care of those same 


Cuar, XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 145 


Bonapartes, the creature was doomed to degenerate, and to 
perish out of the world. 

if his intellect was of a poorer quality than men supposed it 
to be at the time of the Anglo-French alliance, it was much 
above the low gauge which people used to assign to it in the 
earlier period which began in 1836 and ended at the close of 
1851. That which had.so long veiled his cleverness from the 
knowledge of mankind was the repulsive nature of the science 
at which he labored. Many men before him had suffered 
themselves to bring craft into politics. Many more, toiling in 
humbler grades, had applied their cunning skill to the conflicts 
which engage courts of law; but no living man perhaps, ex- 
cept Prince Louis Bonaparte, had passed the hours ofa studi- - 
ous youth and the prime of a thoughtful manhood in contriv- 
ing how to apply stratagem to the science of jurisprudence.- 
It was not perhaps from natural baseness that his mind took 
this bent. The inclination to sit and sit planning for the at- 
tainment of some object of desire—this indeed was in his na- 
ture; but the inclination to labor at the task of making law 
an engine of deceit, this did not come perforce with his blood. 
Yet it came with his parentage. It is true he might have de- 
termined to reject the indication given him by the accident of 
his birth, and to remain a private citizen; but when once he 
resolved to become a pretender to the imperial throne, he of 
course had to try and see how it was possible—how it was 
possible in. the midst of this century—that the coarse Bona- 
parte yoke of 1804 could be made to sit kindly upon the neck 
of France; and, France being a European nation, and the yoke 
being in substance a yoke such as Tartars make for Chinese, 
it followed that the accommodation of the one to the other 
was only to be effected by guile. 

Therefore, by the sheer exigencies of his inheritance rather 
than by inborn wickedness, Prince Louis was driven to be a 
- contriver; and to expect him to be loyal to France, without 
giving up his pretensions altogether, would be as inconsistent 
as to say that the heir of the first Perkin might undertake to 
revive the fleeting glories of the House of Warbeck, and yet 
refrain from imposture. 

For years the Prince pursued his strange calling; and by 
the time his studies were over, he had become highly skilled. 
Long before the moment had come for bringing his crooked 
science into use, he had learned how to frame a Constitution 
‘which should seem to enact one thing and really enact anoth- 
er. He knew how to put the word ‘jury’ in laws which rob- 
bed men of their freedom. He could set the snare which he 

Vou. L.—G . é 


146 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV," 


cailed ‘universal suffrage.’ He knew howto strangle a nation 
in the night time with a thing he called a ‘Plebiscite.’ 

The Inwyer-like ingenuity “which had thus been evoked for 
purposes of Jurispr udence could, of course, be applied to the 
composition of State Papers and to political writings of all 
kinds; and the older Prince Louis grew, the more this odd ac- 
complishment of his was used to subserve his infirmities. It 
was his nature to remain long in suspense, not merely between 
similar, but even between opposite plans of action: this weak- 
ness grew upon him with his years; and, his conscience being 
used to stand neuter in these mental conflicts, he never could 
end his doubt by seeing that one course was honest, and the 
other not; so,in order to be able to linger safely in his sus- 
pense, he had to be always making resting-places upon which 
-for a time he might be able to stand undecided. Just as the 
indolent man becomes clever in framing excuses for his delays, 
so Prince Louis, because he was so often hesitating between 
the right and the left, became. highly skilled in contriving— 
not merely ambiguous phrases, but—ambiguous schemes of 
action. 

Partly from habits acquired in the secret societies of the 
Italian Carbonari, partly from long years passed in prison, 
and partly too, as he once said, from his intercourse with the 

calm, self-possessed men of the English turf, he had derived 
the power of keeping long silence; but he was not by nature 
a reserved nor a secret man. ‘Toward foreigners, and especial- 
ly toward the English, he was generally frank. He was re- 
served and wary with the French, but this was upon the prin- 
ciple which makes a sportsman reserved and wary with deer, 
and partridges, and trout. No doubt he was capable of dis- 
sembling, and continuing to dissemble through long periods 
of time, but 1t would seem that his faculty of keeping his in- 
tentions secret was very much aided by the fact that his judg- 
ment was often in real suspense, and that he had therefore no 
secret to tell. His love of masks and disguises sprang more 
perhaps from the odd vanity and the theatric mania which will 
be presently spoken of than from a base love of deceit, for it 
is certain that the mystery in which he loved to wrap himself 
up was often contrived with a view to a melo-dramatic sur- 
prise. 

It is believed that men do him wrong who speak of him as 
void of all idea of truth. He understood truth, and in conver- 
sation he habitually preferred it to falsehood, but his truthful- 
ness (though not perhaps contrived for such an end) sometimes 
became a means of deception, because after generating confi- 


Cuar. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 7 147 


dence it would suddenly break down under the pressure of a 
strong motive. He could maintain friendly relations with a 
man, and speak frankly and truthfully to him for seven years, 
and then suddenly deceive him. Of course, men finding them- 
selves insnared by what had appeared to be honesty in his char- 
acter, were naturally inclined to believe that every semblance of 
a good quality was a mask; but it is more consistent with the 
principles of human nature to believe that a truthfulness con- 
tinuing for seven years was a genuine remnant of virtue, than 
that it was a mere preparation for falsehood. His doubting 
and undecided nature was a help to concealment; for men got 
so wearied by following the oscillations of his mind, that their 
suspicions in time went to rest; and then, perhaps, when he 
saw that they were quite tired of predicting that he would do 
a thing, he gently stole out and did it. 

He had boldness of the kind which is produced by reflection 
rather than that which is the result of temperament. In order 
to cope with the extraordinary perils into which he now and 
then thrust himself, and to cope with them decorously, there 
was wanted a fiery quality which nature had refused to the 
great bulk of mankind as well as to him. But it was only in 
emergencies of a really trying sort, and involving instant phys- 
ical danger, that his boldness fell short. He had all the courage 
which would have enabled him in a private station of life to 
pass through the common trials of the world with honor un- 
questioned ; but he had besides, now and then, a factitious kind 
of audacity produced by long dreamy meditation; and when 
he had wrought himself into this state, he was apt to expose 
his firmness to trials beyond his strength. The truth is, that 
his imagination had so great a sway over him as to make him 
love the idea of enterprises, but it had not strength enough to 
give him a foreknowledge of what his sensations would be in 
the hour of trial. So he was most venturesome in his schemes 
for action, and yet, when at last he stood face to face with the 
very danger which he had long been courting, he was liable to 
be scared by it, as though it were something new and strange. 

He loved to contrive and brood over plots, and he had a 
great skill in making the preparatory arrangements for bring- 
ing his schemes to ripeness; but his labors in this direction 
had a tendency to bring him into scenes for which by nature 
he was ill fitted, because, like most of the common herd of men, 
he was unable to command the presence of mind and the flush 
of animal spirits which are needed for the critical moments ofa 
daring adventure. In short, he was a thoughtful, literary man, 
deliberately tasking himself to venture into a desperate path, 


148 | TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


and going great lengths in that direction, but liable to find 
himself balked in the moment of trial by the sudden and chill- 
ing return of his good sense. 

‘He was not by nature bloodthirsty nor cruel, and besides 
that in small matters he had kind and generous instincts, he 
, was really so willing to act fairly until the motive for foul play 
was strong, that for months and months together he was able 
to live amongst English sporting-men without incurring dis- 
grace; and if he was not so constituted nor so disciplined as 
to be able to refrain from any object of eager desire merely 
upon the theory that what he sought to do was wicked, there 
is ground for inferring that his perception of the difference 
between right and wrong had been dimmed (as it naturally 
would be) by the habit of seeking an ideal of manly worth in 
a personage like the first Bonapar te. It would seem that (as 
a study, or out of curiosity, if not with a notion of being guided 
by it) he must have accustomed himself to hear sometimes 
what conscience had to say, for it is certain that, with a pen in 
his hand and with sufficient time for preparation, he could imi- 
tate very neatly the scrupulous language of a man of honor.! 

What he always longed for was to be able to seize and draw 
upon himself the wondering attention of mankind; and the 
accident of his birth having marked out for him the throne of 
the First Napoleon as an object upon which he might fasten a 
hope, his craving for conspicuousness, though it had its true 
root in vanity, soon came to resemble ambition; but the men- 
tal isolation in which he was kept by the nature of his aims 
and his studies, the seeming poverty of his intellect, his blank 
wooden looks, and, above all, perhaps the supposed remoteness 
of his chances of success, these sources of discouragement, con- 
trasting with the grandeur of the object at which he aimed, 
caused his pretension to be looked upon as something mer ely 
comic and odd. Linked with this his passionate desire to at- 
tain to a height from which he might see the world gazing up 
at him, there was a strong and almost eccentric fondness for 
the artifices by which the framer of a melo-drama, the stage- 
manager, and the stage-hero combine to produce their effects ; 
and so, by the blended force of a passion and a fancy, he was 

1 See inter alia his address to the Electors, 29th Nov., 1848; ‘his speech, 
read after taking the oath, 20th Dec., 1848; speech at Ham, 22nd July, 
1849; ditto at Tours, Ist Aug., 1849; message to the Chambers, 3rd Dec., 
1849; ditto 12th Nov., 1850. It will be seen (see post) that, according to 
my view, these declarations may have been composed at a time when he was 
really shrinking from treason; but if, as others suppose, they were intended 


to hoodwink the country, it must be owned that they counterfeited the senti- 
ments of an honest man with extraordinary skill. 


Cuar. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 149 


impelled to be contriving scenic effects and surprises in which 
he himself was always to be the hero. This bent was so strong 
and dominant as to be, not a mere taste for theatric arrange- 
ments, but rather what men call a propensity. Standing alone, 
it would have done no more perhaps than govern the character 
of his amusements; but, since his birth had made him a pre- 
tender to the throne of France, his desire to imitate and repro- 
duce the Empire supplied a point of contact between his the- 
atric mania and what one may call his rational ambition, and 
the result was that, so long as he was in exile, he was always 
filled with a desire to mimic Napoleon’s return from Elba, and 
to do this in his own person and upon the stage of the actual 
world. 

In some of its features his attempts at Strasburg in 1836 was 
a graver business than is commonly supposed. At that time 
he was twenty-eight years old. He had gained over Vaudrey, 
the officer commanding a regiment of artillery which formed 
part of the garrison. Early in the morning of Sunday the 30th 
of October the movement began. By declaring that a revolu- 
tion had broken out in Paris, and that the king had been de- » 
posed, Vaudrey persuaded his gunners to recognize the prince 
as Napoleon II]. Vaudrey then caused detachments to march 
to the houses of the Prefect, and of General Voirol, the Gen- 
eral commanding the garrison, and made them both prisoners, 
placing sentries at their doors. All this he achieved without 
alarming any of the other regiments. 

Supposing that there really existed among the troops a deep 
attachment to the name and family of Bonaparte, little more 
seemed needed for winning over the whole garrison than that 
the heir of the great Emperor should have the personal quali- 
ties requisite for the success of the enterprise. Prince Louis 
was brought into the presence of the captive General, and tried 
to gain him over, but was repulsed. Afterward the Prince, 
surrounded with men personating an imperial staff, was con- 
ducted to the barrack of the 46th Regiment, and the men, 
taken entirely by surprise, were told that the person now in- 
troduced to them was their Emperor. What they saw was a 
young man with the bearing and countenance of a weaver—a 
weaver oppressed by long hours of monotonous in-door work, 
which makes the body stoop and keeps the eyes downeast ;_ but 
all the while—and yet it was broad daylight—this young man, 
from hat to boot, was standing dressed up in the historic cos- 
tume of the man of Austerlitz-and Marengo. It seems that 
this painful exhibition began to undo the success which Vau- 
drey had achieved; but strange things had happened in Paris 


150 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


before, and the soldiery could not, with certainty, know that 
the young man might not be what they: were told he was— 
Napoleon II., the new-made Emperor of the French. Their 
perplexity gave the Prince an opportunity of trying whether 
the sentiment for the Bonapartes were really existing or not, 
and, if it were, whether he was the man to kindle it. 

But by-and-by Talandier, the Colonel of the regiment, hay- 
ing been at length apprised of what was going on, came into 
the yard. He instantly ordered the gates to be closed, and 
then—fierce, angry, and scornful—went straight up to the spot 
where the proposed Emperor and his ‘Imperial Staff’? were 
standing. Of course this apparition—the apparition of the 
indignant Colonel whose barrack had been invaded—was ex- 
actly what was to be expected, exactly what was to be com- 
bated; but yet, as though it were something monstrous and 
undreamt of, it came upon the Prince with a crushing Power. 
To him, a literary man, standing in a barrack-yard, in the dress 
of the great conqueror, an angry Colonel, with authentic war- 
rant to command, was something real, and therefore, it seems, 
dreadful. In amoment Prince Louis succumbed to him. Some 
thought that, after what had been done that morning, the 
Prince owed it to the unfortunate Vaudrey (whom he had se- 
duced into the plot) to take care not to let the enterprise 
collapse without testing his fortune to the utmost by a stren- 
uous, not to say desperate resistance; but this view did not 
prevail. One of the ornaments which the Prince wore was 
a sword; yet without striking a blow he suffered himself to 
be publicly stripped of his grand cordon of the Legion of 
Honor and all his other decorations.’ According to one ac- 
count, the angry Colonel inflicted this dishonor with his own 
hands, and not only pulled the grand cordon from the Prince’s 
bosom, but tore off his epaulettes, and trampled both epau- 
Jettes and grand cordon under foot. When he had been thus 
stripped, the Prince was locked up. The decorated follow- 
ers, Who had been impersonating the Imperial Staff, under- 
went the same fate as their chief. Before judging the Prince 
for his conduct during these moments, it would be fair to as- 
sume that, the Colonel having once been suffered to enter the 
yard, and to exert the ascendency of his superior firmness, the 
danger of attempting resistance to him would have been great, 


? Dispatch of General Voirol, Moniteur, 2nd November. After stating the 
arrival of Lt. Col. Talandier in the barrack-yard, the dispatch says, ‘ Dans 
‘une minnté L. N. Bonaparte et les miserables qui avaient pris parti pour lui 
‘ont été arretés, et les decorations dont ils etaient reyétus ont été arrachées 
‘par Jes soldats du 46™¢,’ 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 151 


would have been greater than any which the common herd of 
men are at all inclined to encounter. Besides, the mere fact 
that the Prince had willfully brought himself into such a pre- 
dicament, shows that, although it might fail him in very trying 
moments, he had extraordinary daring of a particular kind. It 
would be unjust to say, flatly, that a man so willing as he was 
to make approaches to dangers was timid. It would be fairer 
to say that his characteristic was a faltering boldness. He 
could not. alter his nature, and his nature was to be venture- 
some beforehand, but to be so violently awakened and shocked 
by the actual contact of danger as to be left without the spir- 
it, and seemingly without the wish or the motives, for going 
on any farther with the part of a desperado. The truth is that 
the sources of his boldness were his vanity and his theatric 
bent; and these passions, though they had power to bring him 
to the verge of danger, were not robust enough to hold good 
against man’s natural shrinking from the risk of being killed— 
being killed within the next minute. Conscious that in point 
of hat, and coat, and boots, he was the same as the Emperor 
Napoleon, he imagined that the great revoir of 1815, between 
the men and the man of a hundred fights, could be acted over 
again between modern French troops and himself; but it is 
plain that this belief had resulted from the undue mastery which 
he had allowed, for a time, to his ruling propensity, and not 
from any actual overthrow of the reason; for when checked, 
he did not, like a madman or a dare-devil, try to carry his ven- 
ture through; nor did he even, indeed, hold on long enough to 
try, and try fairly, whether the Bonapartist sentiment to which 
he wished to appeal were really existent or not: on the con- 
trary, the moment he encountered the shock of the real world, 
he stopped dead ; and becoming suddenly quiet, harmless, and 
obedient, surrendered himself (as he always has done) to the 
first man who touched him. The change was like that seem- 
ing miracle which is wrought when a hysteric girl, who seems 
to be carried headlong by strange hallucinations, and to be 
clothed with the terrible power of madness, is suddenly cured 
and silenced by a rebuke and a sharp angry threat. Accept- 
ing a small sum of money! from the Sovereign whom he had 
been trying to dethrone, Prince Louis was shipped off to Amer- 
ica by the good-natured King of the French. 

But if he was wanting in the quality which enables a man 
to go well through with a venture, his ruling propensity had 
strength enough to make him try the same thing over and over 


* £600. 


152 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [C-ar. XIV. 


again. His want of the personal qualifications for enterprises 
of this sort being now known in the French Army, and ridicule 
having fastened upon his name, he could not afterward seduce 
into his schemes any officers of higher rank than a lieutenant. 
Yet he did not desist. Before long he was planning another 
‘return from Elba,’ but this time with new dresses and decora- 
tions. So long as he was preparing counterfeit flags, and coun- 
terfeit generals, and counterfeit soldiers,’ and teaching a forlorn 
London bird to play the part of an omen, and guide the des- 
tiny of France, he was perfectly at home in that kind of states- 
manship.; and the framing of the plebiscites and proclamations 
which formed a large part of his cargo was a business of which 
he was master; but if his arrangements should take effect, then 
what he had to look for was, that, at an early hour on a sum- 
mer morning, he would find himself in a barrack-yard at Bou- 
logne surrounded by a band of armed followers, and supported 
by one of the officers of the garrison whom he had previously 
gained over; but also having to do with a number of soldiery 
of whom some would be for him, and some inclining against 
him, and others confused and perplexed. Now, this was ex- 
‘actly what happened to him: his arrangements had been so 
skillful, and fortune had so far lured him on, that whither he 
meant to go, there he was at last, standing in the very circum- 
stances which he had brought about with long design afore- 
thought. But then his nature failed hin. Becoming agitated, 
and losing his presence of mind,? he could not govern “the re- 
sult of the struggle by the resources of his intellect ; and being 
also without the fire and the joyfulness which come to warlike 
men in moments of crisis and of danger, he was ill qualified to 
kindle the hearts of the bewildered soldiery. So, when at last 
a firm, angry officer? forced his way into the barrack-yard, he 
conquered the Prince almost instantly by the strength of a 
more resolute nature, and turned him out into the street, with 
all his fifty armed followers, with his flag and his eagle,‘ and 
his counterfeit head-quarters Staff, as though he were dealing 
with a mere troop of strolling players. 5 Yet only a few weeks 
afterward this same Prince Louis Napoleon was able to show 


‘ The dresses were made to counterfeit the uniform of the 42nd, one of the 
regiments quartered at Boulogne; and buttons having on them the number 
of the regiment were forged for the purpose at Birmingham. 

* This is his own explanation of his state given before the Chamber of 
Peers. The flutter he was in*caused him, as he explained, to let his pistol 
go off without intending it, and to hit a soldier who was not taking part 
against him.—Moniteur for 1840, pp. 2031-2034. 

* Captain Col. Puygellier. 

“ The eagle here spoken of is the wooden one. ° Moniteur, ubi ante. 


Cuap. XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 153 


by his demeanor before the Chamber of Peers that, where the 
occasion gave him leisure for thought, and for the exercise of 
mental control, he knew how to comport himself with dignity, 
and with a generous care for the safety and welfare of his fol- 
lowers. | 

It was natural that a man thus constituted should be much 
inclined to linger in the early stages of a plot. But, since it 
chanced that by his birth and by his ambition Prince Louis 
Napoleon was put forward before the world as a pretender to 
the throne of France, he had always had around him a few 
keen adventurers who were willing to partake his fortunes; 
and if there were times when his personal wishes would have 
inclined him to choose repose or indefinite delay, he was too 
considerate in his feelings toward his little knot of followers to 
be capable of forgetting their needs. 

In 1851 motives of this kind, joined with feelings of disap- 
His overtures POintment and of personal humiliation, were driving 
to the gentlee the President forward. He had always wished to 
athe time bring about a change in the Constitution, but, orig- 
Poe inally, he had hoped to be able to do this with the 

resident. : ’ 

aid and approval of some at least of the statesmen 
and eminent generals of the country; and the fact of his de- 
siring such concurrence in his plans seems to show that he did 
not at first intend to trample upon France by subjecting her 
to a sheer Asiatic despotism, but rather to found such a mon- 
archy as might have the support of men of station and charac- 
ter. But, besides that few people believed him to be so able 
a man as he really was, there attached to him at this period a 
good deal of ridicule. So, although there were numbers in 
France who would have been heartily glad to see the Repub- 
lic crushed by some able dictator, there were hardly any public 
men who believed that in the President of the Republic they 
would find the man they wanted. Therefore his overtures to 
the gentlemen of France were always rejected. Every states- 
man to whom he applied refused to entertain his proposals. , 
Every general whom he urged always said that for whatever 
he did he must have ‘an order from the Minister of War.’ 

The President being thus rebuffed, his plan of changing the 
Isrebnfea £0r'm of government with the assent of some of the 
and falls into - leading statesmen and generals of the country de- 
Mate en generated into schemes of a very different kind ; 
pressed him and at length he fell into the hands of persons of 

: the quality of Persigny, Morny, and Fleury. With 
these men he ‘plotted, and strangely enough it happened that 
the character and the pressing wants of his associates gave 


G2 


154 TRANSACTIONS WHICH | [Cuap. XIV. 


strength and purpose to designs which without this stimulus 
might have long remained mere dreams. The President was 
easy and generous in the use of money, and he gave his follow- 
_ers all he could, but the checks createdby the constitution of 
the Republic were so effective that, beyond the narrow limit 
allowed by law, he was without any command of the State re- — 
sources. In their inveterate love of strong government, the 
Republicans had placed within reach of the Chief of the State 
ample means for overthrowing their whole structure, and yet 
they allowed him to remain subject to the same kind of anxiety 
and to be driven to the same kind of expedients as an embar- 
rassed tradesman.’ This was the President’s actual plight, and 
if he looked to the future as designed for him by the Constitu- 
tion, he could see nothing but the prospect of having to step 
down on a day already fixed, and descend from a conspicuous 
station into poverty and darkness. He would have been con- 
tent perhaps to get what he needed by fair means. In the be- 
ginning of the year he had tried hard to induce the Chambers 
to increase the funds placed at his disposal. He failed. From 
that moment it was to be expected that, even if he himself 
should still wish to keep his hands from the purse of France, 
his associates, becoming more and more impatient and more 
and more practical in their views, would soon press their chief 
Into action. 

The President had been a promoter of the law of the 31st of 
ile declares Lay, restricting the franchise, but he now became 
for universal the champion of universal suffrage. To minds 
aga versed in politics this change might have sufticed 
to disclose the nature of the schemes upon which the Chief of 
the State was brooding ; but from first to last, words tending 
to allay suspicion had been used with great industry and skill. 
From the moment of his coming before thé public in February, 
1848, the Prince laid hold of almost every occasion he could 
find for vowing, again and again, that he harbored no schemes 
against the Constitution. The speech which he addressed to 
the Assembly in 1850! may be taken as one instance, out of 
numbers, of these solemn and volunteered declarations.2 He 
His solemn _ ‘considered,’ he said, ‘as great criminals, those 
losalte tothe, © Who by personal ambition compromised the small 
Republic. ‘amount of stability secured by the Constitution 
‘. .. that if the Constitution contained defects and dangers, 
‘the Assembly was competent to expose them to the eyes of 
‘the country ; but that he alone, bound by his oath, restrained 


713th November. —? See an enumeration of a few of these given ante. - 


Cuar. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR.” 155 


‘himself within the strict limits traced by that act.’ He de- 
_ clared that ‘ the first duty of authorities was to inspire the peo- 
‘ple with respect for the law by never deviating from it them- ’ 
‘selves; and that his anxiety was not, he assured the Assem- 
‘bly, to know who would govern France in 1852, but to em- 
‘ploy the time at his disposal so that the transition, whatever 
‘it might be, should be effected without agitation or disturb- 
‘ance; for,’ said he, ‘the noblest object, and the most worthy 
‘of an exalted mind, is not to seek when in power how to per- 
‘petuate it, but to labor inseparably to fortify, for the benefit 
‘ot all, those principles of authority and morality which defy 
‘the passions of mankind and the instability of laws.’ 

It was thus that, in language well contrived for winning be- 
lief, he repudiated as wicked and preposterous the notion of 
his being the man who would or could act against the Consti- 
_ tution; and, supposing that when he voluntarily made these 

declarations he had resolved to do what he afterward did, he 
would have been guilty of deceit more than commonly black; 
but perhaps an appreciation of the room which he had in his 
mind for double and conflicting views, and a knowledge of his 
hesitating nature, and of the pressing wants of the associates 
by whom he was surrounded, may justify the more friendly 
view of those who imagine that, when he made all these sol- 
emn declarations, he was really shrinking from treason. Cer- 
tainly, his words were just such as may have pictured the real 
thoughts of a goaded man at times when he had determined to 
make a stand against hungry and resolute followers who were 
keenly driving him forward. 

It was natural that in looking at the operation which changed 
the Republic into an Empire, the attention of the observer 
shéuld be concentrated upon the person who, already the Chief 
of the State, was about to attain to the throne; and there 
seems to be no doubt that what may be called the literary part 
of the transaction was performed by the President in person. 
He was the lawyer of the confederacy. He no doubt wrote 
the Proclamations, the Plebiscites, and the Constitutions, and 
all such like things; but it seems that the propelling power 
which brought the plot to bear was mainly supplied by Count 
de Morny, and by a resolute Major named Fleury. 

M. Morny was a man of great daring, and gifted with more 
than common powers of fascination. He had been a 
member of the Chamber of Deputies in the time of 
the monarchy; but he was rather known in the world as a spec- 
ulator than as a politician. He was a buyer and seller of those 
fractional and volatile interests in trading adventures which 


Morny. 


156 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


go by the name of ‘shares,’ and since it has chanced that the 
nature of some of his transactions has been brought to light by 
the public tribunals, it is probable that the kind of repute in | 
which he is held may be owing in part to those disclosures.! 
He knew how to found a ‘company,’ and he now undertook 
to establish institutions which were destined to be more lucra- 
tive to him than any of his former adventures. M. Morny was 
a practical man. If Prince Louis Napoleon was going to be 
content with a visionary life, thinking fondly of the hour when 
grateful France would come of her own accord and salute him 
Emperor, M. Morny was not the sort of person who would con- 
sent to stand loitering with him in the hungry land of dreams. 

It seems, however, that the man who was the most able to 
make the President act, to drive him deep into his 
own plot, and fiercely carry him through it, was 
Major Fleury. Fleury was young, but his life had been check- 
ered. He was the son of a Paris tradesman, from whom at 
an early age he had inherited a pleasant sum of money. He 
plunged into the enjoyments of Paris with so much ardor that 
that phase of his career was soon cut short; but whilst his fa- 
ther’s friends were no doubt lamenting ten times a day that 
the boy had ‘ eaten his fortune,’ young Fleury was at the foot 
of a ladder which was destined to give him a control over the 
fate of a mighty nation. He enlisted in the army as a common 
soldier; but the officers of his corps were so well pleased with 
the young man, and so admired the high spirit with which he 
met his change of fortune, that their good-will soon caused 
him to be raised from the ranks. It was perhaps his knowl- 
edge about horses which first caused him to be attached to 
the Staff of the President. 

From his temperament and his experience of life, it resulted 
that Fleury cared a great deal for money or the fhings which 
money can buy, and was not at all disposed to stand still and 
go without it. He was daring and resolute, and his daring 
was of the kind which holds good in the moment of danger. 
If Prince Louis Bonaparte was bold and ingenious in design- 
ing, Fleury was the man to execute. The one was skillful in 
preparing the mine and laying the train; the other was the 
man standing by with a lighted match, and determined to 
touch the fuse. The support of such a comrade as Fleury in 
the barrack-yard at Strasbourg or at Boulogne might have 


Fleury. 


1 The trials here referred to are the action for libel against M. Cabrol, 
Tribunal of the Seine, January 21, and June 30, 1853; and the suit insti- 
tuted by the shareholders of the ‘Constitutionnel’ against Veron, Mirés, and 
Morny. 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 1547 


brought many lives into danger, but it would have prevented 
the enterprise from coming to a ridiculous end. Jn truth, the 
nature of the one man was the complement of the nature of 
the other; and between them they had a set of qualities so 
puissant for dealing a sudden blow, that, working together, 
and with all the appliances of the Executive Government at 
their command, they were a pair who might well be able to 
make a strange dream come true. It would seem that from 
the moment when Fleury became a partaker of momentous se- 
crets, the President ceased to be free. At all events, he would 
have found it costly to attempt to stand still. 

The language held by the generals who declared that they 
Fleury search- WOuld act under the authority of the Minister of 
olin, War and not without it, suggested the contrivance 
Arnaud. which was resorted to. Fleury determined to find 
a military man capable of command, capable of secrecy, and 
capable of a great venture. The person chosen was to be 
properly sounded, and if he seemed willing, was to be admit- 
ted into the plot. He was then to be made Minister of War, 
in order that through him the whole of the land forces should 
be at the disposal of the plotters... Fleury went to Algeria to 
find the instrument required, and he so well performed his task 
that he hit upon a general officer who was christened, it seems, 
Jacques Arnaud Le Roy, but was known at this time as 
Achille St. Arnaud. Of some of the adventures of this person 
it will be right to speak hereafter.) There was nothing in his 
past life, nor in his then plight, which made it at all dangerous 
St.Arnaudis for Fleury to approach him with the words of a 
Saini =Suborner. He readily entered into the plot. From 
ter-of-War. the moment that Prince Louis: Bonaparte and his 
associates had intrusted their secret to the man of Fleury’s se- 
- lection, it was perhaps hardly possible for them to flinch, for 
the exigencies of St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, were not likely 
to be on so modest a scale as to consist with the financial ar- 
rangements of a Republic governed by law, and the discontent 
of a person of his quality, with a secret like that in his charge, 
would plainly bring the rest of the brethren into danger. He 
was made Minister of War. This was on the 27th of October. 

At the same time M. Maupas, or de Maupas, was brought 
into the Ministry. In the previous July this per- 
son had been Prefect of the Department of the 
Upper Garonne. Of him, his friends say that he had proper- 
ty, and that he has never been used to obtain money dishon- 


Maupas. 


1 In chapter XXIX. 


158 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ~ [Cuap. XIV, 


estly. His zeal had led him to desire that thirty-two persons, 
including three members of the Council-General, should be 
seized and thrown into prison on a charge of conspiring 
against the Government. The legal authorities of the depart- 
ment refused to suffer this, because they said there was no 
ground for the charge. Then this Maupas, or de Maupas, pro- 
posed that the want of all ground for accusing the men should 
be supplied by a stratagem, and with that view he deliberately 
offered to arrange that incriminating papers, and arms, and 
grenades should be secretly placed in the houses of the men 
whom he wanted to have accused. Naturally the legal author- 
‘ities of the department were horror-struck by the proposal, and 
they denounced the Prefect to the keeper of the seals. Mau- 
pas was ordered to Paris.!. From the indignant and scornful 
presence of M. Faucher he came away sobbing; and people 
who knew the truth supposed him to be for ever disgraced 
and ruined, but he went and told his sorrows to the President. 
Heis aubornea LHe President, of course, instantly saw that the 
and made Pre’ man could be suborned. He admitted him into the 
fect of Police. lot, and-on the 27th of October appointed him 
Prefect of Police. 

Persigny, properly Fialin, was in the plot. He was descend- 
ed on one side of an ancient family, and, disliking 
his father’s name, he seems to have called himself 
for many years after the name of his maternal grandfather.? 
He began life as a non-commissioned officer. As he himself . 
said, his instinct was‘ to serve; and at first he served the Le- 
gitimists, but chance brought him into contact with Louis Bo- 
naparte, and he very soon became the attached friend of the 
Prince, and his partner in all his plans and adventures.” If 
Morny was merely taking up the Bonaparte cause as one of 
many other money speculations, Persigny could truly say that 
he had made it for years his profession, and had even tried, as 
well as he could, to raise it to the dignity of a real political 
principle. But the part intrusted to Persigny on this occa- 
sion, though possibly an important one, was not of a conspicu- 
ous sort. It is said that, the firmness of the Prince Louis 
Bonaparte being distrusted by his comrades, Persigny, who 


Persigny. 


* See the ‘Bulletin Francais,’ pp. 98 et seq. This publication appeared 
under auspices which make it a safe authority. It is to be regretted that its 
statements extend to only a portion of the events connected with the 2nd of 
December. 

’ This, I think, was the account which he gave upon his trial in 1840. Hé 
was tried by the description of Fialin dit Persigny. 

3 Before the Chamber of Peers, 1840. 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 159 


was of a sanguine, hopeful nature, was to remain constantly at 
the Elysée in order to receive the tidings which would be com- 
ing m during the period of danger, and prevent them from 
reaching the President in such a way as to shake him and 
cause despondency. At all events, it would seem that the hand 
of Persigny was not the hand employed to execute the meas- 
ures of the Elysée, and to this circumstance he owes it that he 
will not always have to stand in the same sentences with 
Morny, and Fleury, and Maupas, and St. Arnaud, formerly Le 
Roy. 

It was necessary to take measures for paralyzing the Na- 
Contrivance tional Guard, but the force was under the com-’ 
for paralyzing mand of General Perrot, a man whose honesty could 
Guard, not be tampered with. To dismiss him suddenly 
would be to excite suspicion. The following expedient was 
adopted: the President appointed as Chief of the Staff of the 
National Guard a person named Vieyra. The past life and 
the then repute of this person were of such a kind, that Gen- 
eral Perrot, it seems, conceived himself insulted by the nomi- 
nation, and instantly resigned. That was what the brethren 
of the Elysée wanted. On Sunday the 30th General Lawes- 
tine was appointed to the command.. He was a man who had 
fought in the great wars, but now in his gray hairs he was not 
too proud to accept the part designed for him. His function 
was—not to lead the force of which he took the command, but 
—to prevent it from acting. It was unnecessary to admit 
either Laweestine or Vieyra to a complete knowledge of the 
plot, because all that they were to do was to frustrate the as- 
sembly of the National Guard by withholding all orders and 
preventing the drums from beating to arms. 

Of course the engine on which the brethren of the Elysée 
rested their main hopes was the army, and it was 
known that the remembrance of humiliating con- 
flicts in the streets of Paris had long been embittering the 
temper in which the troops regarded the people of the capital. 
Moreover it happened that at this time the Legislative As- 
sembly had been agitated by a discussion which inflamed the 
troops with fresh anger against civilians in general, but more 
especially against the Parisians, against the representatives of 
the people, and against statesmen and politicians of all kinds. 
A portion of the Chambers, foreseeing that the army might be 
used against the freedom of the Legislative body, had desired 
that the Assembly should avail itself of a provision in the Con- 
stitution which empowered it not only to have an armed force 
for its protection, but .to have that force under the order of its 


The Army. 


160 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ‘[Cuap. XIV. 


Itsindienation OWN nominee. This was a scheme which shocked 
at M.Baze's the mind of the army. In France, of late years, the 
Peepers Minister of War had always been a soldier, and an 
order from him (though it was im reality the order of a mem- 
ber of the civil Government) was habitually regarded by mil- 
itary men as the order of a general having supreme command. 
A proposal to change this system by giving to the Assembly 
a direct control over a portion of the land-forces could be easi- 
“ly*represented to the soldiery as a plan for withdrawing the 
French army from the control of its generals, and placing it 
under the command of men whom the soldiers called ‘law- 
‘yers.’ Seen in this light, the project so exasperated the feel- 
ings of the troops, that, if it had been carried, they would 
pr ‘obably have been stirred up at once to effect by force a vio- 
lent change of the Constitution. The measure was rejected ; 
but anger is not always appeased by the removal of the kin- 
dling motive; and the soreness created by the mere agitation 
of the question had been so well kept up by the means em- 
ployed for the purpose, that the garrison of Paris now came 
to look upon the people with a well-defined feeling of spite. 
Care had been taken to bring into Paris and its neighbor- 
Selection of | hood the regiments most likely to serve the pur- 
regiments and pose of the Elysée, and to give the command to 
of officers for ° : ° 
the Army of generals who might be expected to act without 
ane scruples. The forces in Paris and its neighborhood 
Magnan. - were under the orders of General Magnan. At the 
time of Louis Napoleon’s descent upon the coast near Bou- 
logne, Magnan had had the misfortune to be singled out by 
the Prince as a person to whom it was fitting to offer a bribe 
of £4000. He had also had the misfortune to be detected in 
continuing his intercourse with the officer who had thought it 
safe to come with a proposal like that into the presence of a 
French general. Magnan did not conceal his willingness to 
go all lengths, and the brethren, it appears, wished to bring 
him completely into the plot,! but his panegyrist (not seeing, 
perhaps, the full import of his disclosure) causes it to be 
known that the General, though ready to act against Paris 
and against the Assembly, declined to risk his safety by avow- 
edly joining in the plot. ‘He expressly requested,’ says Gra- 
nier de Cassaignac, ‘not to be apprized until the moment for 
‘taking the necessary dispositions and mounting-on horseback.”? 
In other words, though he was willing to use the forces under 
his command in destroying the Constitution, and in effecting 


' This is inferred from what follows. 
* Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. 


Cuapr. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 161 


such slaughter as might be needed for the purpose, he refused 
to dispense with the screen afforded by an order from the 
Minister of War. In the event of the enterprise failing, he 
would be able to say, ‘I refused to participate in any plot. 
‘The duty ofa soldier is obedience. Here is the order which 
“I received from General St. Arnaud. I did no more than 
‘obey my commanding officer.’ 

On the 27th of November, however, this Magnan assembled 
Meetingof twenty generals whom he had under his command, 
‘eatin ©and gave them to understand that they might soon 
nan’s house. be called upon to act against Paris and against the 
Constitution. They promised a zealous and thorough-going 
obedience ; and although every one of them, from Magnan 
downward, was to have the pleasing shelter of an order from 
his superior officer, they all seem to have imagined that their 
determination was of the sort which. mankind eall heroic, for 
their panegyrist relates with pride that when Magnan and his 
twenty generals were entering into this league and covenant 
against the people of Paris, they solemnly embraced one an- 
other.! 

From time to time the common soldiery were gratified with 
presents of food and wine, as well as with an abundance of flat- 
The army en- tering words, and their exasperation against the ci- 
souragee na. Vilians was so well kept alive that men used to Afri- 
people. can warfare were brought into the humor for call- 
ing the Parisians ‘Bedouins.’. There was massacre in the very 
sound. The army of Paris was in the temper required. 

It was necessary for the plotters to have the concurrence of 
M.St. Georges, the director of the state printing-office. M.St. 
Georges was suborned. Then all was ready. 

On the Monday night between the 1st and the 2nd of Decem- 
Assembly at Per, the President had his usual assembly at the Ely- 
the Klyseeon sée. Ministers who were loyally ignorant of what 
Monday night. was going on were mingled with those who were in 
the plot. Vieyra was present. He was spoken to by the Pres- 
Vieyra’ser- ident, and he undertook that the National Guard 
rand. should not be beat to arms that night. He went 
away, and it is said that he fulfilled his humble task by causing 
the drums to be mutilated. At the usual hour the assembly 
began to disperse, and by eleven o’clock there were only three 
Peforemid- guests who remained. These were Morny (who 
nisht several had previously taken care to show himself at one 


cf the confed- 
erates assem- Of the theatres), Maupas, and St. Arnaud, formerly 


1 Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. 


162 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap, XIV. 


pean aninnas hid Roy. There was, besides, an orderly officer of 

the President, called Colonel Beville, who was initi- 
ated in the secret. Persigny, it seems, was not present. Morny, 
Maupas, and St. Arnaud went with the President into his cab- 
inet; Colonel Beville followed them.' Mocquard, the private 
secretary of the President, was in the secret, but it does not 
appear that he was in the room at this time. Fleury too, it 
seems, was away; he was probably on an errand which tended 
to put an end to the hesitation of his more elderly comrades 
and drive them to make the venture. They were to strike the 
blow that night. They deliberated, but in the absence of 
Fleury their council was incomplete; because at the very mo- 
ment when perhaps their doubts and fears were inclining them 
still to hold back, Fleury, impetuous and resolute, might be tak- 
ing a step which must needs push them forward. By-and-by 
they were apprized that an order which had been given for 
the movement of a battalion of gendarmerie had duly taken 
effect without exciting remark. It is probable that the exe- 
cution of this delicate movement was the very business which 
Fleury had gone to witness with his own eyes, and that it was 
he who br ought the intelligence of its complete success to the 
Elysée. Per haps also he showed that after the step which had 
just been taken, it would be dangerous to stop short, for the 
The President plotter s now passed into action. The President in- 
manne thcol! trusted a packet of manuscripts to Coionel Beville, 
onel Beville. and dispatched him to the state printing-office. 

It was in the streets which surround this building that the 
battalion of gendarmerie had been collected. When Paris 
was hushed in sleep, the battalion came quietly out, and folded 
Transaction at TOWN the state printing-office. From that moment 
the stateprint- until their work was done the printers were all close 
cual teeg captives, for no one of them was suffered to go out. 
For some time they were kept waiting. At length Colonel 
Beville came from the Elysée with his packet of manuscripts. 
These papers were the proclamations required for the early 
morning, and M. St.Georges the Director gave orders to put 
them into type. It is said that there was something like re- 
sistance, but in the end, if not at first, the printers obeyed. 
Each compositor stood whilst he worked between two police- 
men, and, the manuscript being cut into many pieces, no one 
could make out the sense of what he was printing. By these 
Tenor of the proclamations the President asserted that the As- 
Proclamations. sembly was a hot-bed of plots; declared it dis- 


‘ Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. 


Cuap. XIV. ]} BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 163 


solved; pronounced for universal suffrage; proposed a new 
Constitution; vowed anew that his duty was to maintain the 
Republic; and placed Paris and the twelve surrounding de- 
partments under martial law. In one of the proclamations he 
appealed to the army, and strove to whet its enmity against 
civilians, by reminding it of the defeats inflicted upon the troops 
in 1830 and 1848.! 

The President wrote letters dismissing the members of the 
Letters dis- Government who were not in the plot; but he did 
missing Mv, not cause these letters to be delivered until the fol- 
plot. lowing morning. He also signed a paper appoint- 
ing Morny to the Home Office. 

The night was advancing. Some important steps had been 
Hesitation at taken, but still, though highly dangerous, it was not 
the Elysee. absolutely impossible for the plotters to stop short. 
They could tear up the letters which purported to dismiss the 
Ministers, and although they could not hope to prevent the 
disclosures which the printers would make as soon as they 
were released from captivity, 1t was not too late to keep back 
the words, and even the general tenor of the Proclamations. 
But the next steps were of such a kind as to be irrevocable. 

It is said that at this part of the night the spirit of some of 
Fleury drags the brethren was cast down, and that there was one 
a of them who shrank from farther action; but Fleu- 
ry, they say, got into a room alone with the man who wanted 
to hang back, and then locking the door and drawing a pistol, 
stood and threatened his agitated friend with instant death if 
he still refused to go on.? 

What is certain is that, whether in hope or whether in fear, 
Atthreeo'clock the plotters went on with their midnight task. The 
ie sider "order from the Minister of War was probably sign- 
piereaen tee ed by half past two in the morning, for at three it 
nan, was in the hands of Magnan.? 

At the same hour Maupas (assigning for pretext the expect- 
Maupas's ar. ed arrival of foreign refugees) caused a number of 
tangements/r Commissaries to be summoned in all haste to the 
arrests, Prefecture of Police. At half past three in the 
morning these men were in attendance; Maupas received each 

? Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. See also the Annuaire for1851. This last 
publication (which must be distinguished from the Annuaire des Deux Mondes) 
gives an account of the events of December, written in a spirit favorable to the 
Elysée; but the Appendix contains a full collection of official documents. 

* Thave thought it right to introduce this acconnt under a form indicating 
that it is based on mere rumor, but I entertain no doubt that the incident has 
been declared to be true by one of the two persons who stood face to face in 
that room. ’ Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. 


164 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV. 


of them separately, and gave to each distinct instructions. It 
was then that, for the first time, the main secret of the confed- 
erates passed into the hands of a number of subordinate agents. 
During some hours of that night every one of those humble 
Commissaries had the destinies of France in his hands; for he 
might either obey the Minister, and so place his country in the 
power of the Elysée, or he might obey the law, denounce the 
plot, and bring its contrivers to trial. Maupas gave orders for 
the seizure at the same minute of the foremost Generals of 
France, and several of her leading Statesmen. Parties of the 
police, each under the orders of a Commissary, were to be at 
the doors of the persons to be arrested some time beforehand, 
but the seizures were not to take place until a quarter past six.! 

At six o’clock a brigade of infantry, under Forey, occupied 
Disposition of the Quai d’Orsay; another brigade, under Dulac, 
the troops. occupied the garden of the Tuileries; another bri- 
gade, under Cotte, occupied the Place de la Concorde; and an- 
othier brigade of infantry, under Canrobert, with a whole divi- 
sion of cavalry, under Korte, aud another brigade of cavalry, 
under Reybell, was posted in the neighborhood of the Elysée.2 
It would seem that the main objects aimed at by those who 
thus placed the troops were—not at this moment to overawe 
the whole of Paris, but—rather to support the operations of 
Maupas, and to provide for the safety of the brethren at the 
Elyscée by keeping them close under the shicld of the army as 
long as they remained in Paris, and, if such a step should be- 
come necessary, by securing and covering their flight. 

Almost at the same time Maupas’s orders were carefully 
obeyed, for at the appointed minute, and whilst it was still 
dark, the designated houses were entered. The most famous 
The arrests of generals of France were seized. General Changar- 
the principal ier, General Bedeau, General Lamoriciére, General 
xenerals and . > : 
of prominent Cavaignac, and General Leflé were taken from their 
Statesmen. beds, and carried away through the sleeping city 
and thrown into prison.? In the same minute the like was done 
with some of the chief members and officers of the Assembly, 
and amongst others with Thiers, Miot, Baze, Colonel Charras, 
Roger du “Nor d, and several of the democratic leaders. Some 
men believed to be the chiefs of secret societies were also 
seized.*| The general object of these night arrests was that, 
when morning broke, the army should be without generals in- 
clined to observe the law, that the Assembly should be with- 
out the machinery for convoking it, and that all the political 


* Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. ® Ibid. 3 Thid. * Thid. 


Cuap. XIV.) BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 165 


parties in the State should be paralyzed by the disappearance 
of their chiefs. The number of men thus seized in the dark 
was seventy-eight. Eighteen of these were members of the 
Assembly.' 

Whilst it was still dark, Morny, escorted by a body of in- 
pees fantry, took possession of the Home Office, and pre- 
possession of pared to touch the springs of that wondrous ma- 
fe dome OF chinery by which a clerk can dictate to a nation. 
gins to use its Alread y he began to tell forty thousand communes 
os of the enthusiasm with which the sleeping city had 
received the announcement of measures not hitherto disclosed. 

When the light of the morning dawned, people saw the 
Proclamations on the walls, and slowly came to hear that num- 
bers of the foremost men of France had been seized in the 
night time, and that every General to whom the friends of law 
and order could look for help was lying in one or other of the 
Newspapers Prisons. ‘The newspapers, to which a man might 
seizedand run in order to know, and know truly, what others 
SARE thought and intended, were all seized and stopped. 

The gates of the Assembly were closed and guarded, but the 
Meeting of the Deputies, who began to flock thither, found means 
Assembly. = to enter by passing through one of the official resi- 
dences which formed part of the building. They had assem- 
bled in the Chamber in Jarge numbers, and some of them hav- 
ing caught Dupin, their reluctant President, were forcing’ him 
to come and take the chair, when a body of infantry burst in 
It is dispersed aNd drove them out, striking some of them with the 
Ry: Pepont. butt-ends of their muskets. Almost at the same 
time a number of Deputies who had gathered about the side 
entrance of the Assembly were roughly handled and dispersed 
by a body of light infantry. Twelve Deputies were seized by 
the soldiers, and carried off prisoners.” 

In the course of the morning the President, accompanied by 
The Presi- his uncle Jerome Bonaparte and Count Flahault,? 
dent's ride. and attended by many general officers and a nu- 
merous staff, rode through some of the streets of Paris. It 
would seem that his theatric bent had Jed Prince Louis to ex- 
pect from this ride a kind of triumph upon which his fortunes 
would hinge, and certainly the unpopularity of the assembly, 
and the suddenness and perfection of the blow which he had 
struck in the night gave him fair grounds for his hope, but. he 
was hardly aware of the light in which his personal pretensions 


1 Granier de Cassaignac, vol.ii. * La Verité, ‘ Recueil d’Actes Officielles.’ 
° I imagine that, before the night of the 1st of December, Count Flahault 
had some knowledge of what was going to be done. 


166 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV> 


were regarded by the keen laughing people of Paris. The mo- 
ment when they would cease to use laughter against him was 
very near, but it had not yet come. Moreover, he did not 
bring himself to incur the risk which was necessary for ‘obtain- 
ing an acclaim of the people, for he clung to the streets and 
the quays which were close under the dominion of the troops. 
Upon the whole, the reception he met with seems to have been 
neither friendly nor violently hostile, but chilling, and in a quiet 
way scornful. 

It seems that after meeting this check his spirit suffered col- 
lapse. Once again, though not so hopelessly as at Strasbourg 
and Boulogne, he had encountered the shock of the real world. 
And again, as before, the shock felled him. Nor was it strange 
that he should be abashed and desponding: obeying his old 
propensity, he had prepared and appointed for the Austerlitz 
day a great scenic greeting between himself on the one hand, 
and on the other a mighty nation. When, leaving the room. 
where all this had been contrived and rehearsed, he came out 
into the free air, and rode through street after street, it became 
every minute more certain that Paris was too busy, too grave, 
too scornful to think of hailing him Emperor; nay, strange to 
say, the people, being fastidious or careless, or imperfectly 
aware of what had been done, refused to give him even that 
wondering attention which seemed to be insured to him by the 
transactions of the foregoing night; and yet, there they were, 
the proffered Czesar and his long-prepared group of Captains 
sitting published on the backs of real horses with appropriate 
swords and dresses. Perhaps what a man in this plight might 
the most hate would be the sun—the cold December sun. 
Prince Louis rode home, and went in out of sight. 

Thenceforth, for the most part, he remained close shut up in 
Seclusionana the Elysée. There, in an inner room, still decked 
glomof in red trowsers, but with his back to the daylight, 
Prince Louis. 

they say he sat bent over a fireplace for hours and 
hours together, resting his elbows on his knees and burying 
his face in his hands. 

What is better known is that, in general, during this period 
Measures for of danger, tidings were not suffered to go to him 
from alarming Straight. It seems that, either in obedience to his 
messengers. Own dismal intellect, or else because his associates 
had determined to prevent him from ruining them by his 
gloom;he was kept sheltered from immediate cbntact with 
alarming messengers. It was thought more wholesome for 
him to hear what Persigny or the more resolute Fleury might 
think it safe to tell him, than to see with his own eyes an aid- 


Cuap. XIV. | BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 167 


de-camp fresh come from St. Arnaud or Magnan, or a commis- 
sary full fraught with the sensations which were shaking the 
health of Maupas. 

Driven from their Chamber, the Deputies assembled at the 
Meeting of the Mavoralty of the 10th arrondissement. There, upon 
Asse ay. the motion of the illustrious Berryer, they resolved 
ing. that the act of Louis Bonaparte was a forfeiture of 
the Presidency ; and they directed the judges of the Supreme 
Court to meet and proceed to the judgment of the President 
Its decrees, and his accomplices. ‘These resolutions had just 
Troops ascend heen voted, when a battalion of the Chasseurs de 
the stairs, but : 
hesitate to use Vincennes entered the court-yard of the Mayoralty, 
rs . and began to ascend the stairs. One of the Vice- 
Presidents of the Assembly went out and summoned the sol- 
diers to stop, and leave the Chamber free. ‘The officer appeal- 
ed to felt the hatefulness or the danger of the duty intrusted 
to him, and declaring that he was only an instrument, he said 
he would refer for guidance to his chief.) 

Presently afterward, several battalions of the line, under the 
command of General Forey, came up and surrounded the May- 
oralty. The Chasseurs de Vincennes were ordered to load. 
By-and-by two Commissaries of Police came to the door, and, 
announcing that they had orders to clear the hall, entreated 
the Assembly to yield. The Assembly refused. A third Com- 
missary came, using more imperative language, but he also 
seems to have shrank back when he was made to see the law- 
lessness of the act which he was attempting. At length an 
Written orders aid-de-camp of General Magnan came with a writ- 
from Magnan ten order, directing the ofticer in command of the 
hall. _ battalion to clear the hall; to do this, if necessary, 
by force, and to carry off to the prison of Mazas any Deputies 
offering resistance. By his way of framing this order, Magnan 
showed how he crouched under his favorite shelter, for in it 
he declared that he acted ‘in consequence of the orders of the 
‘Minister of War’? The number of Deputies present at this 
moment was two hundred and twenty. The whole Assembly 
a declared that they resisted, and would yield to noth- 
e Assembly. . : 
refuses to yield ing short of force. In the absence of Dupin, M. 
sxcept to foree- Benoist d’Azy had been presiding over the Assem- 
sembly taken bly, and both he and one of the Vice-Presidents 
Pe traps and Were now collared by officers of police and led out. 
marched tothe The whole Assembly followed, and, enfolded be- 
Quai D’Orsay. 2 ; . 4 

tween files of soldiery, was marched through the 


1 La Vérité, ‘ Recueil d’Actes Officielles.’ ? Tbid. 


168 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


streets. General Forey rode by the side of the column. The 
captive Assembly passed through the Rue de Grenelle, the 
Rue St. Guillaume, the Rue Neuve de l’Université, the Rue de 
Beaune, and finally into the Quai @Orsay. The spectacle of 
France thus marched prisoner through the streets seems to 
have pained the people who saw it, but the pain was that of 
men who, witnessing by chance some disagreeable outrage, 
feel sorry that some one else does not prevent it, and then 
pass on. The members of the Assembly, trusting too much to 
mere law and right, had neglected or failed to provide that 
there should be a great concourse of people in the neighbor- 
hood of the hall where they met. Those who saw this ending 
of free institutions were casual by-standers, and were gathered, 
it seems, in no great numbers. There was no storm of indig- 
nation. In an evil hour the Republicans had made it a law 
that the representatives of the people should be paid for their 
services, This provision, as was natural, had brought the As- 
sembly into discredit, for it destroyed the ennobling sentiment 
with which a free people is accustomed to regard its Parlia- 
ment. The Paris workman, brave and warlike, but shrewd 
and somewhat envious, compared the amount of his day’s earn- 
ing with the wages of the Deputies, and it did not seem to 
him that the right cause to stand up for was the cause of men 
who were hired to be patriots at the rate of twenty-five franes 
a day. Still, by his mere taste, and his high sense of the dif- 
ference between what is becoming and what is ignoble, he was 
inclined to feel hurt by the sight of what he witnessed. In 
this doubtful temper the Paris workman stood watching, and 
saw his country slide down from out of the rank of free States. 
The Assembly The gates of the d’Orsay barrack were opened, and 
edoneee, the Assembly was marched into the court. Then 
barrack. the gates closed upon them. 

It was now only two o’clock in the afternoon, but darkness 
was wanted to hide the thing which was next to be done, and 
the members of the Assembly were kept prisoners all the day 
in the barrack. At half past four, three Deputies who had 
been absent came to the barrack and caused themselves to be 
made prisoners with the two hundred and twenty already 
there; and at half past eight in the evening the twelve Depu- 
ties who had been seized by the troops at the house of the As- 
sembly were brought to the barrack, so that the number of 
Deputies there imprisoned was now raised to five hundred 
and thirty-two. 


1 La Véritée, ‘Recueil d’ Actes Officielles.’ 


Cnap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 169 


At a quarter before ten o’clock at night a large number of 
the windowless vans which are used for the transport of felons 
were brought into the Court of the barrack, and into these the 
The members .-WO hundred and thirty-five members of the As- 
of the Assem- Sembly were thrust. They were carried off, some 
bly earried of to the Fort of Mount Valerian, some to the fortress 
prisons in fel- of Vincennes, and some to the prison of Mazas. Be- 
oneve™ fore the dawn of the 3rd of December all the emi- 
nent members of the Assembly, and all the foremost generals 
of France were lying in prison, for now (besides General Chan- 
garnier, and General Bedeau, General Lamoriciére, General 
Cavaignac, and General Leflé, and besides Thiers, and Colonel 
Charras, and Roger du Nord, and Miot, and Baze, and the oth- 
ers who had been seized the night before, and were still held 
fast in the jails) there were in prison two hundred and thirty- 
two of the representatives of the people, including amongst 
The quality of Others of wide renown, Berryer, Odillon Barrot, 
the men im- Barthélemy St. Hilaire, Gustave.de Beaumont, Be- 
prisoned. noist @’Azy, the Duc de Broglie, Admiral Cecile, 
Chambolle, De Courcelles, Dufaure, Duvergier de Hauranne, 

e Falloux, General Lauriston, Oscar Lafayette, Lanjuinais, 
Lasteyrie, the Duc de Luines, the Due de Montebello, General 
Radoult-Lafosse, General Oudinot, De Remusat, and the wise 
and gifted De Tocqueville. Amongst the men imprisoned 
there were twelve Statesmen who had been Cabinet Ministers, 
and nine of these had been chosen by the President himself. 

These were the sort of men who were within the walls of 
Quality ofthe the prisons. Those who threw them into prison 
men whoim- were Prince Louis Bonaparte, Morny, Maupas, and 
prisoned them. St, Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, all acting with the ad- 
vice and consent of Fialin de Persigny, and under the propul- 
sion of Fleury. It is true that the army was aiding, but it has 
been seen that Magnan, who commanded it, had taken care to 
screen himself under the orders of the Minister of War, and in 
the event of his being brought to trial he would no doubt la- 
bor to show that in doing as he did, and in effecting the mid- 
night seizure and imprisonment of his country’s greatest com- 
manders he was an instrument, and not a contriver. 

By the laws of the Republic, the duty of taking cognizance 
Sitting ofthe Of offenses against the Constitution was cast upon 
Supreme Court. the Supreme Court. The Court was sitting, when 


_> The facts mentioned in the above paragraph are not, I believe, contro- 
verted in any important point, but the most authoritative and succinct ac- 
count of what passed will be found in the well-known letter of M. de Tocque- 
ville. 


Vou. I.—H 


170 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XLV, 


The Judzes 20 armed force entered the hall, and the Judges 
forcibly driven were driven from the bench, but not until they had 
from thebeneh- made a judicial order for the impeachment of the 
President. Before the Judges were thrust down they adjourn- 
ed the Court to a day ‘to be named hereafter,’ and they had 
the spirit to order a notice of the impeachment to be served 
upon the President at the Elysée.! If the process-server en- 
countered Colonel Fleury at the Elysée, he would soon find 
that Fleury was not the man who would suffer his gloomy 
master to be depressed by the sight of a man with an ugly 
summons from a Court of Law. 

The ancient courage of the Parisians had accustomed them 
Circumstances to the thought of encountering wrong by an armed 
od it ime, Tesistance 5 “put there were many causes which ren- 
dent to resort dered-it unwise for them at that moment to appeal 
to insurrection to force. The events of 1848, and the doctrines of 
ofthelaws. the sect called Socialists, had filled men’s minds 
with terror. People who had known what it was to be for 
months and months together in actual fear for their lives and’ 
for their goods, were brought down into a condition of mind 
which made them willing to side with any executive govern- 
ment however lawless, against any kind of insurrection howev- 
er righteous. Moreover, the feeling of contempt with which 
the President had been regarded was not immediately changed 
by the events of the 2nd of December. It was effectually 
changed, as will be seen, by the carnage of the 4th; but before 
the afternoon of that day, the very extravagance of ‘the outr age 
which had been perpetrated so reminded men of the invasion 
of Strasbourg and the grotesque descent upon Boulogne, that 
during the fifty-four hours which followed upon the dawn of 
the 2nd, the indignation of the public was weakened by its 
sense of the ridiculous. The contemptuous cry of ‘Soulouque!’ 
indicated that Paris was comparing Louis Napoleon to the ne- 
gro Emperor who had travestied the achievements of the First 
Bonaparte; and there were many to whom it seemed that his 
mimicry of the 18th Brumaire belonged to exactly the same 
class of enterprises as his mimicry of the return from Elba.. 
Plainly the difference was, that this time, instead of having 
only afew dresses and. counterfeit flags, he commanded the re- 
sources of the most powerful executive government in the 
world, but still there was a somewhat wide-spread belief that. 
the President was tumbling as fast as was necessary, and would 
soon be defeated and punished. Besides, by the contrivance 


* ‘Bulletin Francais.’ 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. t7T 


already described, the plotters had paralyzed the National 
Guard. Moreover, it would seem that the great body of the 
working men did not conceive themselves to be hurt by what 
had been done. Universal suffrage, and the immediate privi- 
lege of choosing a dictator for France, were offerings well fit- 
ted to win over many honest though credulous laborers, and 
_ the baser sort, whose vice is envy, were gratified by what had 

been done, for they loved to see the kind of inversion which 
_ was implied in the fact, that men like Lamoriciére, and Bedeau, 
and Cavaignae, like De Luines, like De Tocqueville, and the 
Due de Broglie, could be shut up in a jail or thrown into a fel- 
on’s van by persons like Morny, and Maupas, and St. Arnaud, 
formerly Le Roy. Thus there was no sufficing material for 
the immediate formation of insurgent forces in Paris. The 
rich and the middle classes were indignant, but they had a hor- 
ror of insurrection; and the poor had less dread of insurree- 
tion, but then they were not indignant. It is known moreover 
that for the moment there was no fighting power in Paris. 
Paris has generally abounded in warlike and daring men, who 
love fighting for fighting’s sake; but for the time, this portion 
of the French community had been crushed by the result of 
the great street-battle of June, 1848, and the seizures and ban- 
ishments which followed the defeat of the insurgents. The 
men of the barricades had been stripped of their arms, deprived 
of their leaders, and so thinned in numbers as to be unequal to 
any serious conflict, and their helplessness was completed by 
the sudden disappearance of the street captains and the chiets 
of secret societies, who had been seized in the night between 
the 1st and 2nd of December. 

Still, there was a remnant of the old insurrectionary forces 
The Commit. Which was willing to try the experiment of throw- 
tee of Resist- ing up a few barricades, and there was, besides, a 
ite small number of men who were impelled in the 
same direction by motives of a different and almost opposite. 
- kind. These last were men too brave, too proud, too faithful 
in their love of right and freedom to be capable of acquiescing- 
for even a week in the transactions of the December night. 
The foremost of these was the illustrious Victor Hugo. He 
and some of the other members of the Assembly who had es- 
eaped seizure, formed themselves into a Committee of Resist- 
ance, with a view to assert by arms the supremacy of the law. 
This step they took on the 2nd of December. 

Several members of the Assembly went into the Faubourg 
St. Antoine, and strove to raise the people. .These deputies 
were Schelcher, Baudin, Aubry, Duval, Chaix, Malardier, and 


172 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar..XIV? 


Attempted de Flotte, and they were vigorously supported by 
rising in te? ~Cournet, whose residence became their head-quar- 
Antoine. ters, and by Xavier Durrieu, Kesler, Ruin, Lemaitre, 
Wabripon, Le Jeune, and other men connected with the dem- 
ocratic press. More, it would seem, by their personal energy 
than by the aid of the people, these men threw up a slight 
he barricade D2tVicade at the corner of the Rue St. Marguerite. 
of the Rue St. Against this there marched a battalion of the 19th 
Marguerite. Regiment; and then there occurred a scene which 
may make one smile for a moment, and may then almost force 
one to admire the touching pedantry of brave men, who 
imagined that, without policy or warlike means, they could be 
strong with the mere strength of the law. Laying aside their 
fire-arms, and throwing across their shoulders scarfs which 
marked them as Representatives of the People, the Deputies 
ranged themselves in front of the barricade, and one of them, 
Charles Baudin, held ready in his hand the book of the Con- 
stitution. When the head of the column was within a few 
yards of the barricade, it was halted. For some moments 
there was silence. Law and Force had met. On the one side 
was the Code democratic, which France had declared to be 
perpetual; on the other a battalion of the line. Charles Bau- 
din, pointing to his book, began to show what he held to be 
the clear duty of the battalion; but the whole basis of his ar- 
gument was an assumption that the law ought to be obeyed ; 
and it seems that the officer in command refused to concede 
what logicians call the ‘major premiss,’ for, instead of accept- 
ing its necessary consequence, he gave an impatient sign. Sud- 
denly the muskets of the front rank men came down, came up, 
came level; and in another instant their fire pelted straight 
into the group of the scarfed Deputies. Baudin fell dead, his: 
head being shattered by more than one ball. One other was 
killed by the volley, several more were wounded. The book 
of the Constitution had fallen to the ground, and the defenders 
of the law recurred to their fire-arms. They shot the officer 
who had caused the death of their comrade and questioned 
their major premiss. There was a fight of the Homeric sort 
for the body of Charles Baudin. The battalion won it. Four 
soldiers carried it off! Plainly this attempted insurrection in 
the Faubourg St. Antoine was without the support of the mul- 
titude. It died out. 

The Committee of Resistance now caused barricades to be 
thrown up in that mass of streets between the Hotel de Ville 


* Xavier Durrieu, pp. 23, 24. 


Cuap. XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 178 


Barricades in and the Boulevard, which is the accustomed centre 
central Paris. of an insurrection in Paris; but they were not 
strong enough to occupy the houses, and therefore the troops 
passed through the streets without danger, and easily took 
every barricade which they encountered. When the troops 
retired, the barricades again sprang up, but only to be again 
taken. ‘This state of things continued during part of the 3rd 
of December ; but afterward the efforts of the troops were re- 
Jlaxed, and during the night, and the whole forenoon of the next 
day, the formation of barricades in the centre of Paris was al- 
lowed to go on without encountering serious interruption.? 

At two o’clock in the afternoon of the 4th, the condition of 
State of Paris.  2TiS was this:—The mass of streets which lies be- 
at 2o’clock on tween the Boulevard and the neighborhood of the 
the 4th of Dee. FTotel de Ville was barricaded, and held without 
combating by the insurgents; but the rest of the city was free 
from grave disturbance. The army was impending. It was 
nearly forty-eight thousand strong,” and comprised a force of 
all arms, including cavalry, infantry, artillery, engineers, and 
Attitude ofthe gendarmes. Large bodies of infantry were so post- 
aR ed that brigades advancing from all the quarters of 
the compass could simultaneously converge upon the barricaded 
district. Besides that, by the means already shown, the troops 
had been wrought into a feeling of hatred against the people 
of Paris; they had clearly been made to understand that they 
-were to allow no consideration for by-standers to interfere with 
their fire, that they were to give no quarter, and that they were 
‘to put to death not only the combatants whom they might see 
in arms against them, but those also who, without having been 
seen in the act, might nevertheless be deemed to have taken 
part against them. When it is remembered that the duty— 
the judicial duty—of bringing people within this last category 
was cast upon raging soldiers, it will be clear that the army of 
Paris was brought into the streets with instructions well fitted 
to bring about the events which marked the afternoon of the 
Ath of December.? For reasons which then remained un- 
known, the troops were abstaining from action, and there was 
a good distance between the heads of the columns and the out- 
posts of the insurgents. 

It is plain that, either because of his own hesitation, or be- 
Hesitation of Cause of the hesitation of the President, or M. St. 
Maeane. Arnaud, the General in command of the army was 


1 Magnan’s Dispatch, Moniteur. 2 47,928. 
3 My knowledge as to what the troops were made to understand is derived 
from a source highly favorable to the Elysée, 


174 TRANSACTIONS WHICH! [CHap. XIV) 


hanging back ;} and in truth, though the mere physical task 
which he had to perform was a slight one, Magnan could not 
but see that politically he had got into danger. The mechan- 
ical arrangements of the night of the 2nd of December had met 
with a success which was wondrously complete; but in other 
respects the enterprise of the Elysian brethren seemed to be 
failing, for no one of mark and character had come forward to 
Its probable abet the President. There were many lovers of 
pxeaads. order and tranquillity who wished the President to 
succeed in overthrowing the Constitution, or giving it. the 
needful wrench, but they had assumed that he would not en- 
gage in any enterprise of this sort without the support of some 
at least of the Statesmen who were the known champions of 
the cause of order. Those whose views had lain in this direc- 
tion were shocked out of their hopes when, on the 2nd of De- 
cember, they came to find that all the honored defenders of 
Bt ar _ the cause of order had been thrown into prison, and 
pparent ter- ° : 

ror of the plot- that the persons who were sheltering the President 
ea ou’ by their concurrence and their moral sanction were 
tinued isola. Morny and Maupas or de Maupas, and St. Arnaud, 

; formerly Le Roy. The list of the Ministry, which 
was published on the following day, contained no name held 
in honor; and the plotters of the Elysée, terrified, as it seems, at 
the state of isolation in which they were placed, resorted to a 
Stratagem of curious stratagem. They formed what they called 
fuming the a ‘Consultative Commission,’ and promulgated a de- 
Commission." gree which purported to appoint as members of the 
body, not only most of the plotters themselves, and others 
whose services they could command, but also some eighty 
other hen who were eminent for their character and station.? 
In so far as it represented these eighty men to be members of 
the Commission, the decree was a counterfeit. One after an- 
other the men with the honored names repudiated the notion 
that they had consented to go and ‘consult’ with Louis Bona- 
parte, and Morny, and Fleury, and Maupas, and St. Arnaud, 
formerly Le Roy. The Elysée derived great advantages from 


1 Magnan, in his dispatch, accounts for his delay in words which tend to 
justify the conclusion of those who believe that the opportunity of inflicting 
slaughter on the people of Paris was deliberately sought for and prepared ; 
but I am not inclined to believe that for such an object a French General 
would throw away the first seven hours of a short December day, and there- 
fore, so far as concerns his motives, I reject Magnan’s statement. I consid- 
er that the disclosures made before the Chamber of Peers, in 1840, give me 
a right to use my own judgment in determining the weight which is due‘to 
this person’s assertions. * Annuaire, Appendix. 

2 Their letters to this effect appeared from time to time in the Eng. journals; 


Cuar. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 175 


this stratagem, because for many precious hours, and. even 
days, it kept the country from knowing what was the number 
and what was the quality of the persons who were really abet- 
ting the President; but Magnan of course knew the truth, 
and when he found, on the morning of the 4th ‘of December, 
that even the complete success of all the arrangements of the 
foregoing Tuesday had not been hitherto puissant enough to 
bring to the Elysée the support of men of weight and charac- 
ter, he had grounds for the alarm which seems to have been 
the cause of his inaction. 

For, regarded in connection with the state of isolation in 
which the plotters still remained, the insurrection, feeble as it 
was, became a source of grave danger to the General in com- 
mand of the troops. It would have been no new thing to 
have to act against insurgents in vindication of the law, and 
under the orders of what had been commonly called a ‘ Gov- 
ernment; but this time the law was on the side of the insur- 
gents, and the knot of men who had got the control of the of- 
fices of the State were not so circumstanced in point of repute 
as to be able to make up for the want of legal authority by 
the weight of their personal character. Therefore it was nat- 
ural for Magnan, notwithstanding his cherished order from 
the Minister of War, to think a good deal of what might hap- 
pen to him if perchance, at the very moment when he was 
taking upon his hands the blood of the Parisians, the plot of 
which he was the instrument should after all break down for 
want of support from men known and honored as Statesmen. 

~ But at length perhaps it was effectually explained to Mag- 
Magran'at | 24N that he must stand or fall with those to whom 
length resolves he was now committed, and that, although he 
toract thought to keep himself ‘under the shelter of the 
‘order of the Minister of War,’ the testimony of any one out 
of the twenty Generals who met him on the 27th of Novem- 
ber would suffice to bring him into nearly the same plight as: 
any of the avowed plotters. A judicious application of this 
kind of torture would make it unnecessary for Colonel Fleury 
to show even the hilt of his pistol. At all events, Magnan’ 
now at last consented to act against the insurrection. He: 
had thrown away the whole of the morning and the better 
part of the afternoon, and this on a short: December day; but 
at two o’clock the troops were ordered to advance, and by 
three all the heads of columns which were converging upon 
the insurrection from different points were almost close to the 
several barricades upon which they had marched. | 

The advance post of the insurgents, at its northwestern, ex- 


176 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV: 


Point ofcon. t¥emity, was covered by a small barricade, which 
tact between crossed the Boulevard at a point close to the Gym- 
baaiihiod by nase Theatre. Some twenty men, with weapons 
the troops and and a drum taken in part from the ‘property room’ 
at occupied : : 

by theinsur- Of the theatre, were behind this rampart, and a 
seas small flag, which the insurgents chanced to find, 
was planted on the top of the barricade.! 

Facing this little barricade, at a distance of about a hundred 
State ofthe 204 fifty yards, was the head of the vast column of 
Boulevard at troops which now occupied the whole of the west- 
three o'clock. ern Boulevard, and a couple of field-pieces stood 
_ pointed toward the barricade. In the neutral space between 
the barricade and the head of the column the shops and almost 
all the windows were closed, but numbers of spectators, in- 
cluding many women, crowded the foot-pavement. These 
gazers were obviously incurring the risk of receiving stray 
shots. But westward of the point occupied by the head of 
the column the state of the Boulevards was different. From 
that point home to the Madeleine the whole carriage-way was 
occupied by troops; the infantry was drawn up in subdivisions 
at quarter distance. Along this part of the gay and glittering 
Boulevard the windows, the balconies, and the foot-pavements 
were crowded with men and women who were gazing at the 
military display. These gazers had no reason for supposing 
that they incurred any danger, for they could see no one with 
whom the army would have to contend. It is true that no- 
tices had been placed upon the walls recommending people 
not to encumber the streets, and warning them that they 
would be liable to be dispersed by the troops without bemg 
summoned ; but, of course, those who had chanced to see this 
announcement naturally imagined that it was a menace ad- 
dressed to riotous crowds which might be pressing upon the 
troops in a hostile way. Not one man could have read it as a 
sentence of sudden death against peaceful spectators. 

At three o’clock one of the field- -pieces ranged in front of: 
the column was fired at the little barricade near the Gymnase. 
The shot went high over the mark. The troops at the head 
of the column sent a few musket-shots in the direction of the’ 
barricade, and there was a slight attempt at reply, but no one 
on either side was wounded; and the engagement, if so it 


1 The great barricade in this district was the one which crossed the Boule- 
vard diagonally near the Porte St. Denis. It is not noticed in the text, be- 
cause the object here is—not to describe in detail the preparations of the in- 
surgents—but merely to show the state of the Boulevard at the point where © 
their advanced post faced the troops. 


Cua. XIV.) BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 179 


could be called, was so languid and harmless that even the 
gazers who stood on the foot- -pavement between the troops 
and the barricade were not deterred from remaining where 
they were. And, with regard to the spectators far ther w est, 
there was nothing that tended to cause them alar m, for they 
could see no one who was in antagonism with the troops. So, 
along the whole Boulevard, from the Madeleine to near the 
Rue du Sentier, the foot- _pavements, the windows, and the bal- 
conies still remained crowded with men, and women, and chil- 
dren; and from near the Rue du Sentier to the little barricade 
at the Gymnase, spectators still lined the foot-pavement, but 
in that last part of the Boulevard the windows were closed.} 

According to some, a shot was fired from a window or a 
The massacre HOUSe-top near the Rue du Sentier. This is denied 
of the Boule- by others, and one witness declares that the first 
a shot came from a soldier near the centre of one of 
the battalions, who fired straight up into the air; but what 
followed was this: the tr oops at the head of the column faced 
about to the south and opened fire. Some ofthe soldiery fired 
point-blank into the mass of spectators who stood gazing upon 
them from the foot-pavement, and the rest of the troops fired 
up at the gay crowded windows and balconies.’ The officers 
in general did not order the firing, but seemingly they were 
agitated j in the same way as the men of the rank and file, for 
such of them as could be seen from a balcony at the corner of 
the Rue Montmartre appeared to acquiesce in all that the sol- 
diery did.§ | 

The impulse which had thus come upon the soldiery near 
the head of the column was a motive akin to panic, for it was 
carried by swift contagion from man to man, till it ran west- 
ward from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle into the Boulevard 
Poissoniére, and gained the Boulevard Montmartre, and ran 
swiftly through its whole length, and entered the Boulevard 
des Italiens. “Thus, by a movement in the nature of that which . 
tacticians describe as ‘conversion,’ a column of some sixteen 
thousand men facing eastward toward St. Denis was suddenly 
formed, as it were, into an order of battle fronting southward, 
and busily firing into the crowd which lined the foot: -pave- 
ment, and upon the men, women, and children who stood at 
the balconies and windows on that side of the Boulevard 
What made the fire at the houses the more deadly was that, 


1 What I say as to the state of the Boulevard at this time is taken from 
many concurrent authorities, but Captain Jesse’s statement (see post) is the 
most clear and satisfactory so far as concerns what he saw. 
~-? Captain Jesse, wha post. 3 Thid. 4 Tbid. 


15 Dee, 


178 ‘TRANSACTIONS WHICH: [Cuap. XIV: 


even after it had begun at the eastern part of the Boulevard 
Montmartre, people standing at the balconies and windows 
farther west could not see or believe that the troops were real- 
ly firing in at the windows with ball cartridge, and they re- 
mained in the front rooms, and even continued standing at the 
windows, until a volley came crashing in. At one of the win- 
dows there stood a young Russian noble with his sister at his 
side. Suddenly they received the fire of the soldiery, and both 
of them were wounded with musket-shots. An English sur- 
geon who had been gazing from another window in the same 
house had the fortune to stand unscathed ; and when he began 
to give his care to the wounded brother and sister, he was so 
tonched, he says, by their forgetfulness of: self, and the love 
they seemed to bear the one for the other, that more than ever 
before in all his life he prized his power of warding off death. 
' Of the people on the foot-pavement who were not struck 
down at first, some rushed and strove to find a shelter, or even 
a half-shelter, at any spot within reach. Others tried to crawl 
away on their hands and knees; for they hoped that perhaps 
the balls might fly over them, ‘The impulse to shoot people 
had been sudden, but was not momentary. The soldiers load- 
ed and reloaded with a strange industry, and made haste to 
kill and kill, as though their lives depended upon the quantity 
of the slaughter they could get through in some given period 
of time. 

When there was no longer a crowd to fire into, the soldiers 
would aim carefully at any single fugitive who was trying to 
effect his escape, and if'a man tried to save himself by coming 
close up to the troops and asking for mercy, the soldiers would 
force or persuade the suppliant to keep off, and hasten away, 
and then if they could, they killed him running. This slaughter 
of unarmed men and women was continued for a quarter of an 
hour or twenty minutes. It chanced that amongst the persons. 
standing at the balconies, near the corner of the Rue Mont- 
martre, ‘there was an English officer ; and, because of the posi- 
tion in which he stood, the professional knowledge which 
guided his observation, the composure with which he was able. 
to see and to describe, and the more than common responsi- 
bility which attaches upon.a military narrator, it is probable 
that his testimony will be always appealed to by historians 
who shall seek to give a truthful account of the founding of 
the Second French “Empire. 

At the moment when the firing began, this officer was look- 
ing upon the military display with his wife at his side, and 
was so placed, that if he looked eastward, he could carry his 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 179 


eye along the Boulevard for a distance of about 800 yards, and 
see as far.as the head of the column, and if he looked westward 
he could see to the point where the Boulevard Montmartre 
runs into the Boulevard des Italiens. This is what he writes: 
‘I went to the balcony at which my wife was standing, and 
‘remained there watching the troops. ‘The whole Boulevard; 
‘as far as the eye could reach, was crowded with them, princi: 
‘pally infantry in subdivisions at quarter distance, with heré 
‘and there a batch of twelve-pounders and howitzers, some of 
‘which occupied the rising ground of the Boulevard Poisson- 
‘jere. The officers were smoking their cigars. The windows 
‘were crowded with people, principally women, tradesmen; 
“servants, and children, or, like ourselves, the occupants of 
‘apartments. Suddenly, as I was intently looking with my 
‘glass at the troops in the distance eastward, a few musket: 
‘shots were fired at the head of the column, which consisted 
‘of about 3000 men. In a few moments it spread, and after 
‘hanging a little came down the Boulevard in a waving sheet 
‘of flame. So regular, however, was the fire, that at first I 
‘thought it was a feu de joie for some barricade taken in ad- 
‘vance, or to signal their position to some other division; and 
‘it was not till it came within fifty yards of me that I recog- 
‘nized the sharp ringing report of ball cartridge ; but even then 
£I could scarcely believe the evidence of my ears, for as to my 
‘eyes I could not discover any enemy to fire at; and I contin- 
‘ued looking at the men until the company below me were 
‘actually raising their firelocks, and one vagabond sharper 
‘than the rest —a mere lad without whisker or mustache — 
‘had covered me. In an instant I dashed my wife, who had 
‘just stepped back, against the pier between the windows; 
‘when a shot struck the ceiling immediately over our heads, 
‘and covered us with dust and broken plaster. In a second 
‘after I placed her upon the floor, and in another, a volley 
‘came against the whole front of the house, the balcony, and 
‘windows; one shot broke the mirror over the chimney-piece, 
‘another the shade of the clock; every pane of glass but one 
“was smashed, the curtains and window-frames cut; the room, 
‘in short, was riddled. The iron balcony, though rather low, 
‘was a great protection, still fire-balls entered the room, and 
‘in the pause for reloading I drew my wite to the door, and 
‘took refuge in the back rooms of the house. The rattle of 
‘musketry was incessant for more than a quarter of an hour 
‘after this; and in a very few minutes the guns were unlim- 
‘bered and pointed at the ‘ Magasin” of M. Sallandrouze, five 
‘houses on our right. What the object or meaning of all this 


180 “TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV, 


‘might be was a perfect enigma to every individual in the 
‘house, French or foreigners. Some thought the troops had 
‘turned round and joined the Reds; others suggested ‘that 
‘they must have been fired upon somewhere, though they cer- 
‘tainly had not from our house or any other on the Boulevard 
‘Montmartre, or we must have seen it from the balcony. . . . 
‘This wanton fusillade must have been the result of a panic, 
‘lest the windows should have been lined with concealed en- 
‘emies, and they wanted to secure their skins by the first fire, . 
‘or else it was a sanguinary impulse. .. . The men, as I have 
‘already stated, fired volley upon volley for more than a quar- 
‘ter of an hour without any return; they shot down many of 
‘the unhappy individuals who remained on the Boulevard and 
‘could not obtain an entrance into any house; some persons 
‘were killed close to our door.”! . The like of what was calmly 
seen by this English officer was seen with frenzied horror by 
thousands of French men and women. 

If the officers in general abstained from ordering the slaugh- 
ter, Colonel Rochefort did not follow their example. He was 
an officer in the Lancers, and he had already done execution 
with his horsemen amongst the chairs and the idlers in the 
neighborhood of Tortoni’s, but afterward imagining a shot to 
have been fired from a part of the Boulevard occupied by in- 
fantry, he put himself at the head of a detachment which made 
a charge upon the crowd; and the military historian of these 
events relates with triumph that about thirty corpses, almost 
all of them in the clothes of gentlemen, were the trophies of 
this exploit.2, Along a distance of a thousand yards, going east- 
ward from the Rue Richelieu, the dead bodies were strewed 
upon the foot-pavement of the Boulevard, but at several spots 
they lay in heaps. Some of the people mortally struck would 
be able to stagger blindly for a pace or two until they were 
tripped up by a corpse, and this perhaps is why a large pro- 
portion of the bodies lay heaped one on the other. Before one 
shop-front they counted thirty-three corpses. By the peace- 
ful little nook or court which is called the Cité Bergére they 
counted thirty-seven. The slayers were many thousands of 
armed soldiery: the slain were of a number that never will be 
reckoned; but amongst all these slayers and all these slain 


' Letter from Captain Jesse, first printed in the ‘Times,’ 18th December, 
1851, and given also in the ‘Annual Register.’ 

2 This was in the Boulevard Poissoniére. Mauduit, p. 217, 218. Mauduit 
speaks of these thirty killed as armed men, but it is well proved that there 
were no armed men in the Boulevard Poissoniére, and I have therefore no 
difficulty in rejecting that part of his statement, . bi 


‘Cuar. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 181 


there was not one combatant.. There was no fight, no riot, no 
fray, no quarrel, no dispute.1 What happened was a slaughter 
of unarmed men, and women, and children. Where they lay, 
the dead bore witness. Corpses lying apart struck deeper into 
people’s memory than the dead who were lying in heaps. 
Some were haunted with the look of an old man with silver 
hair, whose only weapon was the umbrella which lay at his 
side. Some shuddered because of seeing the gay idler of the . 
_ Boulevard sitting dead against the wall of a house, and scarce 
parted from the cigar which lay on the ground near his hand. 
Some carried in their minds the sight of a printer’s boy lean- 
ing back against a shop-front, because, though the lad was 
killed, the proof-sheets which he was carrying had remained in 
his hands, and were red with his blood, and were fluttering in 
the wind.?, The military historian of these achievements per- 
mitted himself to speak with a kind of joy of the number of 
women who suffered. After accusing the gentler sex of the 
crime of sheltering men from the fire of the troops, the Colonel 
writes it down that ‘many an amazon of the Boulevard has 
‘paid dearly for her imprudent collusion with that new sort of 
‘barricade,’ and then he goes on to express a hope that women 
will profit by the example, and derive from it ‘a lesson for the 
‘future.3 One woman who fell and died clasping her child, 
was suffered to keep her hold in death as in-life, for the child 
too was killed. Words which long had been used for making 
figures of speech recovered their ancient use, being wanted 
again in the world for the picturing of things real and phys- 
ical. Musket-shots do not shed much blood in proportion to 
the slaughter which they work, but still in so many places the 
foot-pavement was wet and red, that, except by care, no one 
could pass along it without gathering blood. Round each of 
the trees in the Boulevards a little space of earth is left unpaved 
in order to give room for the expansion of the trunk. The 
blood, collecting in pools upon the asphalte, drained down at 
last into these hollows, and there becoming coagulated, it re- 
mained for more than a day and was observed by many. » ‘Their 
‘blood’—says the English officer before quoted—‘ their blood 
‘lay in the hollows round the trees the next morning when we 
‘passed at twelve o’clock. The Boulevards and the adjacent 

' Ispeak here of the Boulevard from the Rue du Sentier to the western ex- 
tremity of the Boulevard Montmartre. : 

? For.accounts of the state of the Boulevard after the massacre, see the 
written statement of eye-witnesses, supplied to Victor Hugo and printed in 
his narrative. It will be seen that I do not adopt M. Victor Hugo’s conclu- 


sions, but there is no reason for questioning the authenticity or the truth of 
the statements which he has collected. 3 Mauduit, p. 278. 


182 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Ciap. XIV) 
‘streets,’ he goes on to say,‘ were at some points a perfect 
‘shambles. Incredible as it may seem, artillery was brought 
to bear upon some of the houses in the Boulevard. On its 
north side the houses were so battered that the foot-pavement 
beneath them was laden with plaster and such ruins as field 
guns can bring down. | 

The soldiers broke into many houses, and hunted the inmates 
from floor to floor, and caught them at last and slaughtered 
them. These things, no doubt, they did under a notion that 
~ shots had been fired from the house which they entered, but it 
is certain that in almost all these instances, if not in every one 
of them, the impression was false. One or two soldiers would 
be seen rushing furiously at some particular door, and this 
sight, leading their comrades to imagine that a shot had been 
fired from the windows above, was enough to bring into the 
accused house a whole band of slaughterers.. The Sallandrouze 
carpet warehouse was thus entered. Fourteen helpless people 
shrank for safety behind some piles of carpets. The soldiers 
killed them crouching. | 

Whilst these things were being done upon the Boulevard; 
Slaughterin four brigades were converging upon the streets 
central Paris. where resistance, though of a rash and feeble kind, 
had been really attempted. One after another the barricades 
were battered by artillery, and then carried without a serious 
struggle; but things had been so ordered that, although there 
should be little or no fighting, there might still be slaughter, 
for the converging movement of the troops prevented escape, 
and forced the people sooner or later into a street barred by 
troops on either side, and then, whether they were combatants 
or other fugitives, they were shot down. It was the success 
of this contrivance for penning in the fugitive crowds which 
enabled Magnan to declare, without qualifying his words, that 
those who defended the barricades in the quartier Beaubourg 
were put to death,? and the same ground justified the Govern- 
ment in announcing that of the men who defended the barri- 
cade of the Porte St. Martin the troops had not spared one.? 
Some of the people thus killed were men combating or flying; 
but many more were defenseless prisoners in the hands of the 
soldiery who shot them. Whatever may have been the cause of 
the slaughter of the unoffending spectators.on the Boulevard,‘ 
it is certain that the shooting of the prisoners taken at the bar- 


1 Mauduit, p. 278. 

* See his Dispatch dated, I think, the 9th December —Moniteur. 

3 The Patrie, one of the official organs of the President, Dec. 6. 

* See the discussion on this subject toward the close of the chapter. 


Cuar. XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 183 


ricades was brought about by causing the troops to understand 
that they were to give no quarter. Over and over again, no 
doubt, the soldiers, listening to the dictates of humanity, gave 
quarter to vanquished combatants, but their clemency was 
looked upon as a fault, and the fault was repaired by shooting 
the prisoners they had taken. Sometimes, as was natural, a 
house was opened to the fugitives, but this shelter did not 
long hold good. For instance, when the barricade near the 
Slaughter of Porte St. Denis was taken, a hundred men were 
pusomers: caught behind it, and all these were shot, but their 
blood was not reckoned to be enough, for, by going into the 
houses where there were supposed to be fugitives, the soldiers 
got hold of thirty more men, and these also they killed.1. The 
way in which the soldiery dealt with the inmates of houses 
suspected of containing fugitives can be gathered by observing 
what passed in one little street. After describing the capture 
of a barricade in the Rue Montorgueil, the military historian 
of these events says that searches were immediately ordered 
to be made in the public houses. ‘A hundred prisoners,’ he 
says, ‘were made in them, the most of whom had their hands 
‘still black with gunpowder, an evident proof of their partici- 
‘pation in the contest. How then was it possible not to exe- 
‘cute with regard to a good many of them the terrible pre- 
‘scriptions of the state of siege ?? 
- This killing was done under orders so stringent, and yet in 
some instances with so much of deliberation, that many of the 
poor fellows put to death were allowed to dispose of their lit- 
tle treasures before they died. Thus, one man, when told that 
-he must die, entreated the officer in command to be allowed to 
send to his mother the fifteen franes which he carried in his 
pocket. The officer consenting, took down the address of the 
man’s mother, received from him the fifteen francs, and then 
killed him. Many times over the like of this was done. 
Great numbers of prisoners were brought into the Prefec- 
Mode of deal. ture of Police, but it appears to have been thought 
ing with some jnconvenient to allow the sound of the discharge of 
of the prison- : a 
ers at the Pre. Musketry to be heard coming from the precincts of. 
alee the building. For that reason, as it would seem, 
another mode of quieting men was adopted. It is hard to have 
to believe such things, but, according to the statement of a for- 
mer member of the Legislative Assembly, who declares that 
he saw them with his own eyes, each of the prisoners destined 
to undergo this fate was driven with his hands tied behind 
-7 An officer engaged in the operation made this statement—not as confes- 
sion of sins, but as a narrative of exploits. * Mauduit, p. 248. © 


184 TRANSACTIONS WHICH. [Cuap. XIV. 


him, into one of the Courts of the Prefecture, and then one of. 
Maupas’s police-officers came and knocked him on the head 
with a loaded club, and felled him—felled him in the way that 
is used by a man when he has to slaughter a bullock.? 

Troops are sometimes obliged to ‘kill insurgents in actual 
Gradations by fight, and unar med people standing in the line of 
eran elarete fire often share the fate of the combatants ; what 
men may be that is the whole world understands. But also an 
distinguished. officer has sometimes caused people to be put to 
death—not because they were fighting against him, nor even. 
because they were hindering the actual operations of the troops, 
but because he has imagined that under some probable change 
of circumstance their continued presence might become a source 
of inconvenience or danger, and he has therefore thought it 
right to have them shot down by way of precaution; but gen- 
erally such an act as this has been preceded by the most earn- 
est entreaties to disperse, and by repeated warnings. ‘This 
may be called a precautionary slaughter of by-standers, who 
are foolhardy or perverse, or willfully obstructive to the troops. 
Again, it has happened that a slaughter of this last-mentioned 
sort has occurred, but without having been preceded by any 
such request or warning as would give the people time to dis- 
perse. This is a willful and malignant slaughter of by-stand- 
ers; but still it is a slaughter of “by: standers whose presence 
might become inconvenient to the tr oops, and therefore per- 
haps it is not simply wanton. Again, it has happened (as we 
have but too well seen) that soldiers not engaged in combat, 
and exposed to no real danger, have suddenly fired into the 
midst of crowds of men and women, who neither opposed nor 
obstructed them. This is ‘wanton massacre.’ Again, it has 
sometimes happened, even in modern times, that when men, 
defeated in fight, have thrown down their arms and surrender- 
ed themselves, asking for mercy, the soldiery to whom they ap- 
pealed have refused their prayers, and have instantly killed 
them. This is called ‘giving no quarter. Again, it has hap- 
pened that defeated combatants, having thrown down their 
arms and surrendered at discretion, and, not having been im- 


! M. Xavier Durrieu, formerly a member of the Assembly, is one of those 
who states that he was an eye-witness of these deeds, having seen them from 
the window of his cell. He says, ‘Souvent quand la porte était renfermée 
‘les sergens de ville se jetaient comme des tigres sur les prisonniers attachés 
‘les mains derriere le dos. Ils les assommaient a coup de casse-téte. Is 
‘les laissaient ralant sur la pierre ou plusieurs d’entre eux ont expiré. . . . 
‘Il en est ainsi ni plus ni moins ; nous l’avons vu des fenétres de nos cellules 

‘qui s’ouvraient sur la cour.’—Ze Coup d” Etat, par Xavier Durrieu, ancicn 
Representant du peuple, pp. 39 40. 


Cuar. X1V.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 185 


mediately killed, have succeeded in constituting themselves the 
prisoners of the vanquishing soldiery, but presently afterward 
(as for instance within the time needed for taking the pleasure 
of an officer on horseback at only a few yards’ distance) they 
have been put to death. This is called ‘ killing. prisoners.’ 

Again, defeated combatants, who have succeeded in constitut- 
ing themselves prisoners, have been allowed to remain alive for 
a considerable time, and have afterward been put to death by 
their captors with circumstances indicating deliberation. This 
is called ‘ killing prisoners in cold blood.’ Again, soldiers after 
a fight in a city have rushed into houses where they believed 
that there were people who helped or favored their adversa- 
ries, and, yielding to their fury, have put to death men and 
women whom they had never seen in combat against them. 
This is massacre of non-combatants, but 1t is massacre commit- 
ted by men still hot from the fight. Again, it has happened 
that soldiery seizing unarmed people, whom they believed to 
be favorers of their adv ersaries, have nevertheless checked their 
fury, and, instead of killing them, have made them prisoners ; 
but afterward, upon the arrival of orders from men more cruel 
than the angry soldiery, these people have been put to death. 
This is called an ‘ execution of non-combatants in cold blood.’ 

Here then are acts of slaughter of no less than nine kinds, 
AHS Hing. and of nine kinds SO distinct that they do not mere- 
ing under all ly differ in their accidents, but are divided the one 
those cates - from the other by strong moral gradations. It is 
bystthesdonfed; certain that deeds ranging under all these nine cat- 

egories were done in Paris on the 4th of December, 

1851, and it is not less certain that, although they were not alll 
of them specifically ordered, they were every one of them 
caused by the brethren of the Klyseé. Moreover, it must be 
remembered that this slaughtering of prisoners was the slaugh- 
tering of men against whom it was only to be charged that 

they 1 were in arms—not to violate, but to defend the ‘laws of 
their country. 

But there is yet another use to which, if it were not for the 
Inquiry asto honest. pride of its officers and men, it would be pos- 
‘hocting of  Sible for an army to be put. In the course of an 
prisoners who insurrection in such a city as Paris, numbers of pris- 
ate nfthe oners might be seized either by the immense police 
civilpower. force which would probably be hard at its work, or 
by troops who would shrink from the hatefulness of refusing 
quarter to men without arms in their hands, and the prisoners 
thus taken, being consigned to the ordinary jails, would be in 


=) ° 
the custody of the civil power. The Government, regretting 


186 ‘TRANSACTIONS WHICH™ [Cuap. XIV) 


that many of the prisoners should have been taken alive, might 
perhaps desire to put them to death, but might be of opinion 
that it would be impolitic to kill them by the hand of the civil 
power. In this strait, if it were not for the obstacle likely to 
be interposed by the honor and just pride of a warlike profes- 
sion, platoons of foot-soldiers might be used—not to defend— 
not to attack—not to fight, but to relieve the civilians from one 
of the duties which they are accustomed to deem most vile, by 
performing for them the office of the executioner, and these 
platoons might even be ordered to help the Government to 
hide the deed by doing their work in the dead hours of the 
night. 

Ts it true that with the sanction of the Home Office and of 
the Prefecture of Police, and under the orders of Prince Louis 
Bonaparte, St. Arnaud, Magnan, Morny, and Maupas, a mid- 
night work of this last ‘kind was done by the army of Paris?» 

To men not. living in the French capital, it seems that there 
is a want of complete certainty about the fate of a great many 
out of those throngs of prisoners who were brought into the 
jails and other places of detention.on the 4th and 5th of De- 
cember. The people of Paris think otherwise. They seem to 
have no doubt. The grounds of their belief are partly of this 
sort: A family, anxious to know what had become of one of 
their relatives who was missing, appealed for help to a man in 
so high a station of life that they deemed him powerful enongh 
to he able to question official personages, and his 1s the testi- 
mony which records what passed. In order, if possible, to find 
a clew to the fate of the lost man, he made the acquaintance 
of one of the functionaries who held the office of a ‘Judge-Sub- 

“stitute” The moment the subject of inquiry was touched, 
the ‘ Judge-Substitute’ began to boil with anger at the mere 
thought of what he had witnessed, but it seems that his indig- 

nation was not altogether. unconnected-with offended pride and 
the agony of having had his jurisdiction invaded. He said that 
he had been ordered to go to some of the jails and examine 
the prisoners with a view to determine whether they should 
be detained or set free, and that, whilst he was engaged in this 
duty, a party of non-commissioned officers and soldiers came 
into the room and rudely announced that they themselves had 
orders to dispose of those prisoners whose fingers were black. - 
Then, without regard to the protesting of the ‘ Judge-Substi- 
‘tute,’ they examined the hands of the prisoners whom he had 
before him, adjudged that the fingers of many of them were 
black, and at once carried off all those whom they so condemn- 
ed, with a view (as the ‘J udge-Substitute’ understood) to shoot 


Cnapr. XIV?] _ BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 187 


them or have them shot. That they were so shot the ‘Judge- 
‘ Substitute’ was certain, but it is plain that he had no personal 
knowledge of what was done to the prisoners after they were 
carried off by the soldiers. Again, during the night of the 4th 
and the night of the 5th, people listening in one of the undis- 
turbed quarters of Paris would suddenly hear the volley of a 
‘single platoon—a sound not heard, they say, at such hours ei- 
ther before or since. The sound of this occasional platoon-fir- 
ing was heard coming chiefly, it seems, from the Champ de 
Mars, but also from other spots, and in particular from the gar- 
dens of the Luxembourg, and from the esplanade of the Inva- 
lides. People listening within hearing of this last spot de- 
clared, they say, that the sound of the-platoon-fire was follow- 
ed by shrieks and moans; and that once, in the midst of the 
other cries, they caught some piteous words, close followed by. 
a scream, and sounding as though they were the words of a 
lad imperfectly shot and dying hard. | 

Partly upon grounds of this sort, but more perhaps by the 
teaching of universal fame, Paris came to believe—and rightly 
or wrongly Paris still believes—that during the mght of the 
4th, and again during the night of the 5th, prisoners were shot 
in batches and thrown into pits. On the other hand, the ad- 
herents of the French Emperor deny that the troops did duty 
as executioners.! Therefore the value of an Imperialist denial, 
with all such weight as may be thought to belong to it, is set 
against the imperfect proof on which Paris founds her belief; 
but men must remember why it is that any obscurity can hang 
upon a question like this. The question whether on the night 
of a given Thursday and a given Friday, whole batches of men 
living in Paris were taken out and shot by platoons in such 
places as the Champ de Mars or the Luxembourg gardens— 
this is a question which, from its. very nature, could not have 
remained in doubt for forty-eight hours, unless Paris at the 
time had lost her freedom of speech and her freedom of print- 


ing; and even now, after a lapse of years, if freedom were re- 
stored to France, the question would be quickly and righteous- 
ly determined. Now it happens that those who took away 
from Paris her freedom of speech and her freedom of printing 
are the very persons of whom it is said that during two De- 
cember nights they caused their fellow-countrymen to be shot 
by platoons and in batches. So it comes to this, that those 
who are charged have made away with the means by which 
the truth might be best established. In this stress, Justice is 


? Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. 


188 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cnap. XIV. 


not so dull and helpless as to submit to be baffled. Wisely de- 
viating in such a case from her common path, she listens for a 
moment to incomplete testimony against the concealer, and 
then, by requiring that he who hid away the truth shall restore 
it to light, or abide the consequence of his default, she shifts 
the duty of giving strict proof from the accuser to the accused. 
Because Prince Louis and his associates closed up the accus- 
tomed approaches to truth, therefore it is cast upon them el- 
ther to remain under the charge which Paris brings against 
them, or else to labor and show, as best they may, that they did 
not cause batches of French citizens to be shot by platoons of 
infantry in the night of the 4th and the night of the 5th of De- 
cember. 

The whole number of people killed by the troops during the 
Uncertaintyas forty hours which followed upon the commence- 
to the number ment of the massacre in the Boulevards will never 
of people killed. 44 known. The bur ying of the bodies was done for 
the most part at night. In sear ching for a proximate notion 

of the extent of the carnage, it is not safe to rely even upon the 
acknowledgments of the officers engaged in the work, for dur- 
ing some time they were under an impression that it was fa- 
vorable to a man’s advancement to be supposed to be much 
steeped in what was done. The colonel of one of the regi- — 
ments engaged in this slaughter spoke whilst the business 
was fresh in his mind. It would be unsafe to accept his state- 
ment as accurate or even as substantially true, hut as it 1s cer- 
tain that the man had taken part in the transaction of which 
he spoke, and that he really wished to gain credence for the 
words which he uttered, his testimony has a kind of value as 
representing (to say the least of it) his idea of what could be 
put forward as a creditable statement by one who had the 
means of knowing the truth. What he declared was that his 
regiment alone had killed two thousand four hundred men. 
Supposing that his statement was any thing like an approach 
to the truth, and that his corps was at all rivaled by others, a 
very high number would be wanted for recording the whole 
quantity of the slaughter.? 
TiAl ddiohherdtiai Ae army which did these things, the whole 
army in killed. number of killed was twenty-five.? 

Of all men dwelling in cities the people of Paris are perhaps 


' The number of regiments operating against Paris was between thirty 
and forty, and of these about twenty belonged to the divisions which were 
actively employed in: the work. 

2 Including all officers and soldiers killed from the 3rd to the 6th of De- 
cember. The official return, Moniteur, p. 3062. 


Cnap, XIV.3 BROUGHT ON THE WAR. — — 189: 


Effect of the the most warlike. Less almost than any other Eu- 
the people of TOpeans are they accustomed to overvalue the lives 
Paris. of themselves and their fellow-citizens. With them 
the joy of the fight has power to overcome fear and grief, and 
they had been used to great street battles; but they had not 
been used of late to witness the slaughter of people unarmed 
and helpless. At the sight of what was done on that 4th of 
December the great city was struck down as though by a 
plague. A keen-eyed Englishman, who chanced to come upon 
some of the people retreating from these scenes of slaughter, 
declared that their countenances were of a strange livid hue 
which he had never before seen. This was because he had 
never before seen the faces of men coming straight from the 
witnessing of a massacre. ‘They say that the shock of being 
within sight and hearing the shrieks broke down the nervous 
strength of many a brave though tender man, and caused him 
to burst into sobs as though he were a little child. ° 

_ Before the morning of the 5th the armed insurrection had 
ceased. From the first it had been feeble. On the other hand, 
the moral resistance which was opposed to the acts of the Pres- 
ident and his associates had been growing in strength, and 
when the massacre began on the afternoon of the 4th of De- 
cember, the power of this moral resistance was in the highest 
degree formidable. Yet it came to pass that, by reason of the 
strange prostration of mind which was wrought by the mas- 
sacre, the armed insurrection dragged down with it in its fall 
the whole policy of those who conceived that by the mere force 
of opinion and ridicule they would be enabled to send the plot- 
ters to Vincennes. The Cause of those who intended to rely. 
upon this scheme of moral resistance was in no way mixed up 
with the attempts of the men of the barricades, but still it was 
a Cause which depended upon the high spirit of the people, 
and it had happened that this spirit-—perplexed and baffled on 
the 2nd of December by a stratagem and a night attack—was 
now crushed out by sheer horror. 

For her beauty, for her grandeur, for her historic fame, for 
her warlike deeds, for her power to lead the will of a mighty 
nation, and to crown or discrown its monarchs, no city on earth 
1s worthy to be the rival of Paris. Yet, because of the palsy 
that came upon her after the slaughter on the Boulevard, this 
Paris—this beauteous, heroic Paris—this queen of great re- 
nown, was delivered bound into the hands of Prince Louis Bo- 
naparte, and Morny,and Maupas or de Maupas, and St. Arnaud, 
formerly Le Roy. And, the benefit which Prince Louis de- 
rived from the inassacre was not transitory. It is a maxim of 


190 TRANSACTIONS WHICH * [(Cuap. XIV2 


French politics that, happen what may, a man seeking to be a 
ruler of France must not be ridiculous. From 1836 until 1848. 
Effect of the Prince Louis had never ceased to be obscure except 
site ene of PY bringing upon hinself the laughter of the world ; 
Louis Bona- and his election into the chair of the Presidency had 
miigquelifien, ODly served to bring upon him a more constant out- 
tions. pouring of the scorn n and sareasm which Paris knows. 
how to bestow.! . Even the suddenness and perfect suecess of 
the blow struck in the night between the Ist and the 2nd of 
December had failed to make Paris think of him with gravity. 
But it was otherwise after three o’clock on the 4th of Decem- 
ber; and it happcued that the most strenuous adversaries of 
this oddly fated Prince were those who, in one respect, best: 
served his cause, for the more they strove to show that he, and 
he alone, of his own design and malice had planned and order- 
ed the massacre,? the more completely they relieved him from. 
the disquaiification which had hitherto made it impossible for: 
him to become the supreme ruler of France. Before the night 
closed in on the 4th of December, he was sheltered safe from; 
ridicule by the ghastly heaps en the Boulevard. | 
The fate of the provinces resembled the fate of the capital. 
The fate of the Whilst it was still dark on the morning of the 2nd, 
provinees. = Morny, stealing into the Home Office, had intrusted 
his orders for instant and enthusiastic support to the zeal of . 
every prefect, and had ordered that every mayor, every juge. 
de paix, and every other public functionary who failed to give 
in his instant and written adhesion to the acts of the President 
should be dismissed. In France the engine of state is so con- . 
structed as to give to the Home Office an almost irresistible 
power over the provinces, and the means which the Office had 
of coercing France were re-enforced by an appeal to men’s fears 
of anarchy, and their dread of the sect called ‘Socialists.’ Forty. 
thousand communes were suddenly told that they must make. 
swift choice between socialism and anarchy and rapine on the 
one hand, and on the other a virtuous dictator and lawgiver - 
recommended and warranted by the authority of Monsieur de 
Morny. The gifted Montalembert himself was so effectually - 
caught in this springe that he publicly represented the dilem-. 
ma as giving no choice except between Louis Bonaparte and 


‘A glance at the Charivari for ’49,°50, and the first eleven months of 51, 
would verify this statement. The stopping of the Charivari was one of the 
very first exertions of the supreme power which was seized in the night of the 
2nd of December. 
% ? It will be seen (see pos?) that I question the truth of this charge against 


Cuar, XIV.] . BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 191 


‘the ruin of France.’ In the provinces, as in Paris, there were 
men whose love of right was stronger than their fears of the 
Executive Government, and stronger than their dread of the 
- Socialists; but the Department, being kept in utter darkness 
by the arrangements of the Home Office, was slower than 
- Paris in finding out that the blow of the 2nd of December had 
been struck by a small knot of associates, without the concur- 
rence of Statesmen who were the friends of law and order; 
and it would seem that although the proclamations were re- 
eeived at first with stupor and perplexity, they soon engen- 
dered a hope that the President (acting, as the country people 
imagined him to be, with the support of many eminent states- 
men), might effect a wholesome change in the Constitution, 
and restore to France some of the tranquillity and freedom 
which she had enjoyed under the government of her last king. 
There were risings, but every department which seemed likely 
to move was put under martial law. Then followed slaughter, 
banishment, imprisonment, sequestration; and all this at the 
mere pleasure of Generals raging with a cruel hatred of the 
people, and glowing with the glow of that motive—so hateful 
because so sordid—which in centralized states men call ‘zeal.’ 
Of these Generals there were some who, in their fury, went be- 
yond all the bounds of what could be dictated by any thing like 
policy, even though of the most ferocious kind. In the depart- 
ment of the Allier, for instance, it was decreed, not only that 
all who were ‘known’ to have taken up arms against the Govy- 
ernment should be tried by Court Martial, but that ‘those 
-“whose socialist opinions were notorious’ should be transported 
by the mere order of the Administration, and have their prop- 
erty sequestered. The bare mental act of holding a given 
opinion was thus put into the category of black crimes, and 
either the prisoner was to have no trial at all, or else he was 
to be tried, as it were, by the hangman. This decree was issued 
by a man called General Eynard, and was at once adopted and 
promulgated by the Executive Government.! 

‘The violence with which the brethren of the Elysée were 
Motives forthe Taging took its origin, no doubt, from their terror, 
=| ak pee but now that they were able to draw breath, an- 
ken. Terror, Other motive began to govern them and to drive 
tests. them along the same road; for by this time they 
ing support, were able to give to their actions a color which 

tended to bring them the support and good will of 


afraid of anar- ; Z 5 : : 
chy. — whole multitudes—whole multitudes distracted with 


1 Moniteur, 28th Dec. 


192 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV. 


General dreaq 1¢°" Of the democrats, and only longing for safety. 
eneral dread : : 
of the Social- Hor more than three years people had lived in dread 
ag of the ‘ Socialists,’ and though the sect, taken alone, 
was never so formidable as to justify the alarm of a firm man, 
stillit was more or less allied with the fierce species of democrat 
which men called ‘Red,’ and, the institutions of the Republic be- 
ing new and weak, it was right for the nation to stand on its 
guard against anarchy ; though many have judged that the de- 
fenders of order, being upheld by the voice of the millions no less 
than by the forces of intellect and of property, might have kept 
their watch without fear. But, whether the thing from which 
the people ran flying was a danger or only a phantom, the ter- 
ror it spread brought numbers down into a state which was 
hardly other than abject. Of course people thus unmanned 
would look up piteously to the Executive Government as their 
natural protectors, and would be willing to offer their freedom 
in exchange for a little more safety. So now, if not before, 
The brethren the company of the Elysée saw the gain which 
tke ade, would accrue to them if they could have it believed 
age ofthis. that their enterprise was a war against Socialism. 
After the subjugation of Paris, the scanty gatherings of people 
who took up arms against the Government were composed, no 
doubt, partly of Socialists, but partly also of. men who had no 
motive for rising, except that they were of too high a spirit to 
be able to stand idle and see the law trampled down. But the 
brotherhood of the Elysée was master—sole master—of the 
power to speak in print, and by exaggerating the disturbances 
They pretend Going on in some parts of France, as well as by fasten- - 
to be engaged ing upon all who stood up against them the name of 
against Social- the hated sect, they caused it to be believed by thou- 
ane sands, and perhaps by millions, that they were en- 
gaged in a valorous and desperate struggle against Socialism. 
In proportion as this pretense came to be believed, it brought 
Support thus hosts of people to the support of the Executive 
obtained. Government; and there is reason to believe that, 
even among those of the upper classes who seemed to be stand- 
ing proudly aloof from the Elysée, there were many who secret- 
ly rejoiced to be delivered from their fear of the Democrats at 
the price of having to see France handled, for a time, by per- 
sons like Morny and Maupas. | ' 
The truth is, that in the success of this speculation of the 
Elysée many thought they saw how to escape from the vexa- 
tions of democracy in a safe and indolent way. When an 
Arab decides that the burnous which is his garment by day 
and by night has become unduly populous, he lays it upon an 


Cuap. X1V.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 193 


ant-hill in order that the one kind of insect may be chased 
away by the other; and as soon as this has been done, he easi- 
ly brushes off the conquering genus with the stroke of a whip 
or a pipe-stick. In a lazy mood well-born men thought to do 
this with France, and the first part of the process was success- 
ful enough, for all the red sort were killed, or crushed, or hunt- 
ed away; but when that was done it began to appear that 
those whose hungry energies had been made use of to do the 
work were altogether unwilling to be brushed off. They 
clung. Even now, after the lapse of years,! they cling and feed. 

The army in the provinces closely imitated the ferocity of 
Commissaries the army of Paris, but it was to be apprehended 
sent into the that soldiery, however fierce, might deal only with 
prov the surface of discontent, and not strike deep 
enough into the heart of the country. They might kill people 
in streets, and roads, and fields; they might even send their 
musket - balls through windows into the houses, and shoot 
whole batches of prisoners; but they could not so well search 
out the indignant friends of law and order in their inner homes. 
Therefore Morny sent into the provinces men of dire repute, 
and armed them with terrible powers. These persons were 
called Commissaries. In every spot so visited the people shud- 
dered, for they- knew by their experience of 1848 that a man 


‘thus set over them by the terrible Home Office might be a 


ruffian well known to the police for his crimes as well as for 
his services, and that from a potentate of that quality it might 
cost them dear to buy their safety. 

There have been times when the all but dying spark of a na- 
tion’s life has been kept alive by the priests of her 
faith; and when this has happened, there has sprung 
up so deep a love between people and Church that the lapse 
of ages has not had strength to put the two asunder.? In 
France, it is true, the Church no longer wielded the authority 
which had belonged to her of old, but besides that the virtues 
of her humble and laboring priesthood had gained for her 
more means of guiding men’s minds than Europe was accus- 
tomed to believe, she was a cohering and organized body. 
Therefore, at a moment when the whole temporal powers of 
the State had been seized by a small knot of men slyly acting 
in concert, and when the Parliamentary and judicial authority 
which might restrain their violence had been all at once over- 
thrown, the Church of France, surviving in the midst of ruined 

? Written in September, 1861. - 

* See Arthur Stanley’s admirable account of the relations between Russia 
and her Church. 

Vor. I.—I 


The Church. 


194 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV. 


institutions, became suddenly invested with a great power to 
do good or do evil. She might stand between the armed man 
and his victim; she might turn away wrath; she might make 
conditions for prostrate France. Or, taking a yet loftier stand, 
she might resolve to choose—and choose sternly—between 
right and wrong. She chose. 

The priesthood of France were upon the whole a zealous, 
unworldly, devoted body of men; but already the Church 
which they served had been gained over to the President by 
the arrangements which led to the siege and occupation of 
Rome. Therefore, although the priests perceived that Mau- 
pas, coming privily in the night time, had seized the generals 
and the statesmen of France, and had shut up the Parliament, 
and driven the judges from the judgment seat, still it seemed 
to them that, because of Rome, they ought to side with Mau- 
pas. So far as concerned her political action in this time -of 
trial, they suffered the Church of France to degenerate into a 
mere sub-department of the Home Office. In the rural dis- 
tricts, when the time for the Plebiscite came, they fastened 
tickets marked ‘Yes’ upon their people, and drove them in 
flocks to the poll. 

Every institution in the country being thus suborned, or en- 
slaved, or shattered, the brethren of the Elysée resolved to fol- 
low up their victory over France. In the sense which will 
France dis: | presently appear they resolved to disman her. It 
peenNCe had resulted from the political state of France dur- 
ing several years that great numbers of the most stirring men 
in the country had belonged to clubs, which the law called 
‘secret societies.’ A net thrown over this class would gather 
into its folds whole myriads of honest men, and indeed it has 
been computed that the number of persons then alive who at 
one time or other had belonged to some kind of‘ secret socie- 
ty’ amounted to no less than two millions. If French eitizens 
at some period of their lives had belonged to societies forbid- — 
den by Statute, it was enough (and after a lapse of time much 
more than enough) that the penalties of the law which they 
had disobeyed should be enforced against them. But it was 
not this, nor the like of this that was done. 

Prince Louis Bonaparte and Morny, with the advice and 
consent of Maupas, issued a_retro-operative decree, by which 
all these hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen were made lia. 
ble to be instantly seized, and transported either to the penal 
Settlements in Africa, or to the torrid swamps of Cayenne.’ 


1 Decree of 8th December inserted in the Moniteur of the 9th. 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 195 


The decree was as comprehensive as a law would be in Eng- 
land, if it enacted that every man who had ever attended a po: 
litical meeting might be now suddenly transported; but it was 
a hundred times less merciful, for, in general, to be banished to 
Cayenne was to be put to a slow, cruel, horrible death. Mor- 
ny and Maupas pressed and pressed the execution of this al- 
most incredible decree with a ferocity which must have sprung 
in the first instance from terror, and was afterward kept alive 
for the sake of that hideous sort of popularity which was to be 
gained by calling men Socialists, and then fiercely hunting 
them down. None will ever know the number of men who 
at this period were either killed or imprisoned in France, or 
sent to die in Africa or Cayenne; but the panegyrist of Louis 
Bonaparte and his fellow-plotters acknowledges that the num- 
ber of people who were seized and transported within the few 
26,590 men Weeks which followed the 2nd of December, amount- 
transported. ed to the enormous number of twenty-six thousand 
five hundred.? 

France perhaps could have borne the loss of many tens of 
thousands of ordinary soldiers and workmen without being 
visibly weakened; but no nation in the world—no, not even 
France herself—is so abounding in the men who will dare 
something for honor and liberty as to be able to bear to lose 
in one month between twenty and thirty thousand men seized 
from out of her most stirring and most courageous citizens. 
It could not be but that what remained of France when she 
had thus been stricken should for years seem to languish and 
to be of a poor spirit. This is why I have chosen to say that 
France was dismanned. 

But besides the men killed and the men transported, there 
were some thousands of Frenchmen who were made to under- 
go sufferings too horrible to be here told. I speak of those 
who were inclosed in the casemates of the fortresses and hud- 
dled down between the decks of the Canada and the Du- 
guesclin. These hapless beings were for the most part men 
attached to the cause of the Republic. It would seem that 
of the two thousand men whose sufferings are the most known, 
a great part were men whose lives had been engaged in liter- 
ary pursuits, for amongst them were authors of some repute; 
editors of newspapers, and political writers of many grades, 
besides lawyers, physicians, and others whose labors in the 
field of politics had been mainly labors of the intellectual sort. 
The torments inflicted upon these men lasted from two to 


2 Granier de Cassaignac. 


196 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


three months. It was not till the second week in March that 
a great many of them came out into the light and the pure 
air of Heaven. Because of what they had suffered they were 
hideous and terrible to look upon. The hospitals received 
many. Itis right that the works which testify to these things 
should be indicated as authorities on which the narrator founds 
his passing words ;! but, unless a man be under some special 
motive for learning the detailed truth, it would be well for 
him to close his eyes against those horrible pages; for if once 
he looks and reads, the recollection of the things he reads of 
may haunt him and weigh upon his spirit till he longs and 
longs in vain to recover his ignorance of what, even in this his 
own time, has been done to living men. 

At length the time came for the operation of what was call- 
ed the Plebiscite. The arrangements of the plot- 
ters had been of such a kind as to allow France no 
hope of escape from anarchy and utter chaos, except by sub- 
mitting herself to the dictatorship of Louis Bonaparte; for, al- 
Causes render- though the President in his Proclamation had de- 
aia clared that ifthe country did not like his Presiden- 
ble. cy, they might choose some other in his place, no 
such alternative was really offered. The choice given to the 
elector sdid not even purport to be any thing but a choice be- 
tween Louis Bonaparte and nothing. According to the word- 
ing of the Plebiscite, a vote given for any candidate other than 
Louis Bonaparte would have been null. An elector was only 
permitted to vote ‘Yes,’ or vote ‘No;’ and it seems plain 
that the prospect of anarchy involved in the negative vote 
would alone have operated as a sufficing menace. Therefore, 
even if the collection of the suffrages had been carried on with 
perfect fairness, the mere stress of the question proposed would 
have made it impossible that there should be a free election: 
the same central power which nearly four years before had 
compelled the terrified nation to pretend that it loved a repub- 
lic, would have now forced the same helpless people to kneel, 
and say they chose for their one only lawgiver the man rec- 
ommended to them by Monsieur de Morny. | 

Having the army and the whole executive power in their 
hands, and having preordained the question to be put to the 
people, the brethren of the Elysée, it would seem, might have 
safely allowed the proceeding to go to its sure conclusion 
without farther coercing the vote; and if they had done thus, 
they would have given a color to the assertion that the result 

t ¢Te Coup d’Etat,’ par Xavier Durrieu, ancien Representant du Peuple. 
‘Histoire de la Terreur Bonapartiste,’ par Hippolyte Magen. 


The Plebiscite. 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 197 


of the Plebiscite was a national ratification of their act. But 
remembering what they had done, and having blood on their 
hands, they did not venture upon a free election. What they 
did was this: they placed thirty-two departments under mar- 
tial law; and, since they wanted nothing more than a sheet 
of paper and a pen and ink in order to place every other de- 
The election Partment in the same predicament, it can be said 
under martial Without straining a word that potentially, or act- 
is ually, the whole of France was under martial law. 

Therefore men voted under the sword. But martial law is 
Violent meas- Only one of the circumstances which constitute the 
tucrne the, difference between an honest election and a Plebis- 
election. cite of the Bonaparte sort. Of course, for all effect- 
ive action on the part of multitudes, some degree of concert is 
needful, and on the side of the plotters, using as they did the 
resistless engine of the executive government, the concert was 
perfect. ‘To the adversaries of the Elysée, all effective means 
of concerted action were forbidden by Morny and Maupas. 
Not only could they have no semblance of a public meeting, 
but they could not even venture upon the slightest approach 
to those lesser gatherings which are needed for men who want 
to act together. Of course, in these days, the chief engine for 
giving concerted and rational action to bodies of men is the 
Press. But, except for the uses of the Elysée, there was no 
Press. All journals hostile to the plot were silenced. Not a 
word could be printed which was unfavorable to Monsieur 
Morny’s candidate for the dictatorship. Even the printing 
and distributing of negative voting tickets was made penal; 
and during the ceremony which was called an ‘election’ sev- 
eral persons were actually arrested and charged with the of- 
fense of distributing negative voting tickets, or persuading 
others to vote against the President. . It was soon made clear 
that, so far as concerned his means of taking a real part in the 
election, every adversary of the Elysée was as helpless as a 
man deaf and dumb. 

In one department it was decreed that any one spreading re- 
ports or suggesting fears tending to disquiet the people should 
be instantly arrested and brought before a court-martial.! In 
another, every society, and, indeed, every kind of meeting, how- 
ever few the persons composing it might be, was in terms pro- 
hibited,? and it was announced that any man disobeying the 
order would be deemed to be a member of a secret society 


1 Arrété du Général d’Alphonse, Commandant l’état de siege dans le Dee 
partement du Cher, Article 4. 
? Arrété du Préfet de la Haute Garonne, Articles 1, 2, 3. 


198 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV; 


within the meaning of the terrible decree of the 8th of Decem- 
ber, and liable to transportation.’ In the same department it 
was decreed that every one hawking or distributing printed 
tickets, or even manuscripts, unless authorized by the mayor 
or the juge de paix, should be prosecuted ; and the same pre- 
fect, in almost mad rage against freedom, proclaimed that any 
one who was caught in an endeavor to ‘ propagate an opinion’ 
should be deemed guilty of exciting to civil war, and instantly 
handed over to the judicial authority. In another depart- 
ment the sub-prefect announced that any one who threw a 
doubt on the loyalty of the acts of the Government should be 
arrested.? 

These are samples of the means which generals, and prefects, 
and sub-prefects adopted for insuring the result ; but it is hard- 
ly to be believed that all this base zeal was really needed, be- - 
cause from the very first the brethren of the Elysée had taken 
a step which, even if it had stood alone, would have been more 
than enough to coerce the vote. They fixed for the 20th and 
21st of December the election to which civilians were invited ; 
but long before this the army had been ordered to vote (and 
to vote openly without ballot), within forty-eight hours from 
the receipt of a dispatch of the 3rd of December. So, all the 
fontrivance land forces of France had voted, as it were, by beat 
for coereing of drum, and the result of their voting had been 
the vote of the Made known to the whole country long before the 
amy: time fixed for the civilians to proceed to election. 
France, therefore, if she were to dare to vote against the Pres- 
ident, would be placing herself in instant and open conflict with 
the declared will of her own army, and this at a time when, to 
the extent already stated, she was under martial law. 

Surprised, perplexed, affrighted, and all unarmed and help- 
France suc- less, France was called upon either to strive to levy 
Swept: a war of despair against the mighty engine of the 
French executive government, and the vast army which stood 
over her, or else to succumb at once to Louis Bonaparte, and 
Morny, and Maupas, and Monsieur Le Roy St. Arnaud. She 
succumbed. The brethren of the Elysée had asked the coun- 
try to say ‘ Yes’ or‘ No? should Louis Bonaparte alone build 
a new Constitution for the governance of the mighty nation ? 
and when, in the way already told, they had obtained the ‘ Yes,’ 
from herds and flocks of men whom they ventured to number 
at nearly eight millions, it was made known to Paris that the 
person who had long been the favorite subject of her jests was 

1 Arrété du Préfet de la Haute Garonne, Article 3, ® Tbid., Article 4. 

® Arrété du Sous-préfet de Valenciennes. 


Guap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 199 


now become sole lawgiver for her and for France. In the mak- 
ing of such laws as he intended to give the country, Prince 
Prince Louis = 4OUIS was highly skilled, for he knew how to enfold 
solelawgiver the creation of a sheer Oriental autocr acy In @ NO- 
of France. —_- menclature taken from the polity of free European 
States. With the advice and consent of Morny, and no doubt 
The laws he . With the full approval of all the rest of the plotters, 
eave her. he virtually made it the law that he should com- 
mand, and that France should pay him tribute and obey. 

It has been seen that the success of the plot of the 2nd of 
Importance of December resulted from the massacre which took 
re eae place in the Boulevard on the following Thursday ; 
vard, and, since this strange event became the foundation 
of amomentous change in the polity of France, and even in the 
Inquiryinto destinies of Europe, it is right for men to know, if 
pecans. they can, how and why it came to pass. At three 
o’clock on the afternoon of the 4th of December, the ultimate 
success of the plot had seemed to become almost hopeless by 
reason of the isolation to which Prince Louis and his associates 
were reduced. But at that hour the massacre began, and be- 
fore the kodies were cleared away, the brethren of the Elysée 
had Paris and France at their mercy. It was natural that 
wronged and angry men, seeing this cause and this effect, 
should be capable of believing that the massacre was willfully 
planned as a means of achieving the result which it actually 
produced. Just as the Cambridge theologian maintained that 


- he who looked upon a watch must needs believe in a watch- 


maker, so men who had seen the massacre were led to infer a 
demon. They saw that the massacre brought wealth and bless- 
ings to the Elysée, and they thought it a safe induction to say 
that the man who gathered the harvest as though it were his 
own must have sown the seed in due season. Yet, so far as 
one knows, this argument from design is not very well re-en- 
forced by external proof; and perhaps it is more consistent 
with the principles of human nature to believe that the slaugh- 
ter of the Boulevard resulted from the mixed causes which are | 
known to have been in operation, than from a cold design on 
the part of the President to have a quantity of peaceful men 
and women killed in order that the mere horror of the sight 
might crush the spirit of Paris. Without resorting to this 
dreadful solution, the causes of the massacre may be reached 
by fair conjecture. 

The army, as we have seen, was burning with hatred of the 
civilians, and its ferocity had been car efully whetted by the 
President and by St. Arnaud. This feeling, apart from other 


200 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV. 


motives of action, would not have induced the brave soldiery 
of France to fire point-blank into crowds of defenseless men 
and women; but a passion more cogent than anger was work- 
ing in the bosoms of the men at the Elysée and the Generals 
in command, and from them it descended to the troops. 

According to its nature, and the circumstances in which it 
The passion of 18 placed, a creature struck by terror may either lie 
terror trembling in a state of abject prostration, or else 
may be convulsed with hysteric energy ; and when terror seizes 
upon man or beast in this last way, it 1s the fiercest and most 
blind of all passions. The French unite the delicate, nervous 
organization of the south with much of the energy of the north, 
and they are keenly susceptible of the terror that makes a man 
kill people, and the terror that makes him lie down and beg. 
On that 4th of December Paris was visited with terror in either 
form. The army raged, and the people crouched; but army 
and people alike were governed by terror. It is very true, that 
in the Boulevard there were no physical dangers which could 
have struck the troops with this truculent sort of panic, for 
even if it is believed that two or three shots were fired from 
a window or a house-top, an occurrence of that kind,#n a quar- 
ter which was plainly prepared for sight-seeing, and not for 
strife, was too trivial of itself to be capable of disturbing prime 
troops. But the President and his associates, though they had 
succeeded in all their mechanical arrangements, had failed to 
obtain the support of men of character and eminence. For that 
reason they were obviously in peril; and if Morny and Fleury 
still remained in good heart, there is no reason for doubting 
that on the 4th of December the sensations of the President, 
of the two other Bonapartes, of Maupas, of St. Arnaud, and of 
Magnan, corresponded with the alarming circumstances in 
which they were placed. 

The state of the President seems to have been very like what 
State of Prince 1t had been in former times at Strasbourg and at 
Louis Bona- Boulogne, and what it was years afterward at Ma- 
parte during ° : . 
the period of genta and Solferino.!. He did not on any of these 
danger, five occasions so give way to fear as to prove that 
he had less self-control in moments of danger than the common 
run of peaceful citizens; but on all of them he showed that, 
though he had chosen to set himself heroic tasks, his tempera- 
ment was ill fitted for the hour of battle and for the crisis of 
an adventure. For, besides that (in common with the bulk of 
mankind) he was without resource and presence of mind when 


* See Note IV. in Appendix. 


= 


Cnap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 201 


he imagined that danger was really quite close upon him, his 
complexion and the dismal looks he wore in times of trial were 
always against him. From some defect perhaps in the struc- 
ture of the heart or the arterial system, his skin, when he was 
in a state of alarm, was liable to be suffused with a greenish 
hue. This discoloration might be a sign of high moral cour- 
age, because it would tend to show that the spirit was warring 
with the flesh ; but still it does not indicate that condition of 
body and soul which belongs to a true king of men in the hour 
of danger, and enables him to give heart and impulsion to those 
around him. It is obvious too that an appearance of this sort 
would be damping to the ardor of the by-standers. Several 
incidents show that between the 2nd and the 4th of December 
the President was irresolute, and keenly alive to his danger. 
The long-pondered plan of election which he had promulgated | 
on the 2nd of December he withdrew the next day, in obedi- 
ence to the supposed desire of the Parisian multitude. He took 
care to have always close to his side the immense force of cav- 
alry to which he looked as the means of protecting his flight, 
and it seems that during a great portion of the critical interval 
the carriages and horses required for his escape were kept 
ready for instant use in the stable-yard of the Elysée. More- 
over, it was at this time that he suffered himself to resort to 
the almost desperate resource of counterfeiting the names of 
men represented as belonging to the Consultative Commission. 
But perhaps his condition of mind eu be best inferred from 
the posture in which history catches him whilst he nestled un- 
der the wing of the army. 

When a peaceful citizen is in grievous peril, and depending 
He gave atthe £0F his life upon the whim of soldiers, his instinct 
had to the sol- 1s to take all his gold and go and offer it to the 
i armed men, and tell them he loves and admires them. 
What in such stress the endangered citizen would be impelled 
by his nature to do is exactly what Louis Bonaparte did. The 


transaction could not be concealed, and the imperial historian 


seems to have thought that upon the whole the best course 
was to give it an air of classic grandeur by describing the sol- 
diers as the ‘conquerors’ of a rugged Greek word, and by 
calling a French coin an ‘ obolus.’ ‘There remained,’ said he, 
‘to the President out of all his personal fortune, out of all his 
‘patrimony, a sum of fifty thousand franes. He knew that in 
‘certain memorable circumstances the troops had faltered in 
‘the presence of insurrection, more from being famished than 
‘from being defeated; so he took all that remained to him, 
‘even to his last crown-piece, and charged Colonel Fleury to 
I 2 


202 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XIV. 


‘go to the soldiers, conquerors of demagogy, and distribute to 
‘them, brigade by brigade, and man by man, this his last obo- 
‘lus.! The President had said, in one of his addresses to the 
army of Paris, that he would not bid them advance, but would 
himself go the foremost and ask them to follow him. Ifit was 
becoming to address empty play-actor’s words of that sort to 
real soldiers, it certainly was not the duty of the President to 
act upon them, for there could not well be any engagement in 
the streets of Paris as would make it right for a literary man 
(though he was also the chief of the state) to go and affect to 
put himself at the head of an army inured to war; but still 
there was a contrast between what was said and what was 
done, which makes a man smile as he passes. The President 
had vowed he would lead the soldiers against the foe, and in- 
stead, he sent them all his money. There is no reason to sup- 
pose that the change of plan was at all displeasing to the 
troops, and this bribing of the armed men is only adverted to 
here as a means of getting at the real state of the President’s 
mind, and thereby tracing up to its cause the massacre of the 
’ 4th of December. 

Another clew, leading the same way, is to be found in the 
He even sign- Decree by which the President enacted that-com- 
Oreste bats with insurgents at home should count for the 
December. honor and profit of the troops in the same way as 
though they were fought against a foreign enemy.? It is true 
that this decree was not issued until the massacre of the 4th 
was over, but of course the temper in which a man encounters 
danger is to be gathered in part from his demeanor immedi- 
ately after the worst moment of trial; and when it is found 
that the chief of a proud and mighty nation was capable of 
putting his hand to a paper of this sort on the 5th of Decem- 
ber, some idea may be formed of what his sensations were on 
the noon of the day before, when the agony of being in fear 
had not as yet been succeeded by the indecorous excitement 
of escape. 

Whilst Prince Louis Bonaparte was hugging the knees of 
State of Je. the soldiers, his uncle, Jerome Bonaparte, fell into 
rome Bona- so painful a condition as to be unable to maintain 
apie his self-control, and he suffered hiniself to publish a 
letter in which he not only disclosed his alarm, but even show- 
ed that he was preparing to separate himself from his nephew ; 
for he made it appear (as he could do perhaps with strict 
truth) that although he had got into danger by showing hinx 

' Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii., p. 431. 
? Decree of the 5th, inserted in the Moniteur of the 7th Dec. 


Cuap. XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 203 


self in public with the President on the 2nd of December, he 
was innocent of the plot, and a stranger to the counsels of the 
Natural anxie. E:lysée.! His son (now called Prince Napoleon) 
tyof Napoleon, was really, they say, a strong disapprover of the 
son of Jerome. Pyesident’s acts, and it was natural that he should 
be most unwilling to be put to death or otherwise ill treated 
upon the theory that he was the cousin, and therefore the ac- 
complice of Louis, for of that theory he wholly and utterly de- 
nied the truth. Any man, however firm, might well resolve 
that, happen what might to. him, he would struggle hard to 
avoid being executed. by mistake; and it seems unfair to cast 
blame on Prince Napoleon for trying to disconnect his person- 
al destiny from that of the endangered men at the Elysée, 
whose counsels he had not shared. Still, the sense of being 
cast loose by the other Bonapartes could not but be discour- 
aging to Prince Louis, and to those who had thrown in their 
lot with him. - 

Maupas, or de Maupas, was.a man of a fine large robust 
Bodily state of frame, and with florid healthy looks; but it some- 
as times happens that a spacious and strong-looking 
body of that sort is not so safe a tabernacle as it seems for 
man’s troubled spirit. It is said that the bodily strength of 
Maupas collapsed in the hour of danger, and that at a critical 
part of the time between the night of the 2nd of December 
and the massacre of the 4th he had the misfortune to fall ill. 

Finally, it must be repeated that on the 4th of December the 
army of Paris was kept in a state of inaction during all the 
precious hours which elapsed between the earliest dawn of the 
morning and two o’clock in the afternoon. 

These are signs that the brethren of the Elysée were aghast 
Grounds for 2+ What they had done, and aghast at what they 
the anxiety of had to do. And it is obvious that Magnan and the 
ae cEitaprasi twenty Generals who had embraced one another on 
and the gener- the 27th of November were now more involved in 
Cohen pea dite danger of the plot than at first they might have 
expected to be, for the isolation in which the President was 
left, for want of men of character and station who would con- 
sent to come and stand round him, must have made all these 

1 The letter will be found in the ‘Annual Register.’ It seems to have 
been sent at 10 o’clock at night onthe 4th of December; but the writer evi- 
dently did not know that the insurrection at that time was so near its end as 
it really was, and his letter may therefore be taken as a fair indication of the 
state of his mind in the earlier part of the day. The advice and the mild 
remonstrance contained in the letter might have been given in private by a 
man who had not lost his calm, but the fact of allowing such a letter to be 
public discloses Jerome’s motives. 


204 TRANSACTIONS WHICH —[Cuar. XIV. 


Generals feel that even the sovereign warrant of ‘an order 
‘from the Minister of War’ was a covering which had become 
very thin. 

Now, by nature the French people are used to go in flocks, 
Effect of anx- and in their army there is not that social difference 
upon Fiench, between the officers and the common soldiers which 
troops. is the best contrivance hitherto discovered for in- 
tercepting the spread of a panic or any other bewildering im- 
pulse. With their troops, any impulse, whether of daring or 
fear, will often dart like lightning from man to man, and quick- 
ly involve the whole mass. Generally, perhaps, a panic in an 
army ascends from the ranks. On this day, the panic, it seems, 
went downward. For six hours the army had been kept 
waiting and waiting under arms within a few hundred yards 
of the barricades which it was to attack. The order to ad- 
vance did not come. Somewhere there was hesitation; and 
the Generals could not but know that even a little hesitation 
at such a time was both a sign and a cause of danger; but 
when they saw it continuing through all the morning hours of 
a short December day, they could hardly have failed to appre- 
hend that the plot of the Elysée was collapsing for want of 
support, and they could not but know that, if this dread were 
well founded, their fate was likely to be a hard one. 

The temperament of Frenchmen is better fitted for the hour 
of combat than for the endurance of this sort of protracted 
tension; and the anxiety of men of their race, when they are 
much perturbed and kept in long suspense, wall easily degen- 
erate into that kind of alarm which is apt to become ferocious. 
This was the kind of stress to which the troops were put on 
that 4th of December, and in the case of Magnan and the Gen- 
erals under him, the pangs of having to wait upon the brink 
of action for more than two thirds of a day were sharpened by 
a sense of political danger; for they felt that if, after all, the 
scheme of the Elysée should fail, their meeting of the 27th 
might cause them to be brought to trial. Any one knowing 
what those twenty-one Generals had on their minds, and being 
also somewhat used to the French army, will almost be able 
to hear the grinding of the teeth and the rumbling of the curses 
which mark the armed Frenchman, when he rages because he 
is anxious. Even without the utterance of any words, the 
countenances of men thus disturbed would be swiftly read in 
a body of French troops; and though the soldiery and the in- 
ferior officers would not be able to make out very well what it 
was that was troubling the minds of the Generals, the sense of 
not knowing all would only make them the more susceptible 


Cuap. XIV. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 205 


of infection. On the other hand, it is certain that the instruc- 
tions given to the troops prescribed the ruthless slaughtering 
of all who resisted or obstructed them; and although it is of 
course true that these directions would not compel or sanction 
the slaughter of peaceful crowds not at all obstructing the 
troops, still they would so act upon the minds of the soldiery 
that any passion which might chance to seize them would be 
likely to take a fierce shape. . 

Upon the whole, then, it would seem that the natural and 
surmisea  Well-grounded alarm which beset the President and 
cause of the some of his associates was turned to anxiety of the 
massa’ yaging sort when it came upon the military com- 
manders, and that from them it ran down, till at last it seized 
upon the troops with so maddening a power as to cause them 
to face round without word of command, and open fire upon a 
crowd of gazing men and women. 

If this solution were accepted, it would destroy the theory 
which ascribes to Prince Louis Bonaparte the malign design 
of contriving a slaughter on the Boulevard as a means of strik- 
ing terror and so crushing resistance, but it would still remain 
true that, although it was not specifically designed and ordered, 
the massacre was brought about by him, and by Morny, Mau- 

pas, and St. Arnaud, all acting with the concurrence and under 
*the encouragement of Fleury and Persigny. By them the 
deeds of the 2nd of December were contrived and done. By 
them, and in order to the support of those same deeds, the 
army was brought into the streets. By their industry the 
minds of the soldiery were whetted for the slaughter of the 
Parisians, and finally by their hesitation, or the hesitation of 
Magnan their instrument, the army, when it was almost face to 
face with the barricades, was still kept standing and expect- 
ant, until its Generals, catching and transmitting in an altered 
form the terror which had come upon them from the Elysée, 
brought the troops into that state of truculent panic which 
was the immediate cause of the slaughter. It must also be re- 
membered that the doubt which I have tried to solve extends 
only to the cause which brought about the massacre of the 
peaceful crowds on the Boulevard; for it remains unquestioned 
that the killing of the prisoners taken in the barricaded quar- 
ter was the result of design, and was enforced by stringent 
orders. Moreover, the persons who had the blood upon their 
hands were the persons who got the booty. St. Arnaud is no 
more; but Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Morny, Fleury, Maupas, 
Magnan, and Persigny—all these are yet alive, and in their pos- 
session the public treasures of France may still be abundant- 
ly found. 


206 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


It is known that the most practised gamesters grow weary 
sometimes of their long efforts to pry into the future which 
chance is preparing for them, and that in the midst of their 
anxiety and doubt they are now and then glad to accept guid- 
ance from the blind, confident guess of some one who is younger 
and less jaded than themselves; and when a hot-headed lad in- 
sists that he can govern fortune, when he ‘calls the main,’ as 
though it were a word of command, and shakes the dice-box 
with a lusty arm, the pale doubting elders will sometimes fol- 
low the lead of youth’s high animal spirits, and if they do this 
and win, their hearts are warm to the lad whose fire and will- 
fulness compelled them to run the venture. Whether it be 
Gratitude due true, as is said, that in the hour of trial any of the 
io Fleary, brethren of the Elysée were urged forward by Colo- 
nel Fleury’s threats, or whether, abstainmg from actual vio- 
lence, he was able to drive them on by the sheer ascendency 
of a more ardent and resolute nature, it is certain that he well 
earned their gratitude, if by any means, gentle or rough, he 
forced them to keep their stake on the table. For they won. 
The nse the bey won France. They used her hard. They took 
Hlysée made of her freedom. They laid open her purse, and were 

rich with her wealth. They went and sat in the 
seats of Kings and Statesmen, and handled the mighty nation 
as they willed in the face of Europe. Those who hated free- 
dom, and those also who bore ill will toward the French peo- 
ple, made merr y with what they saw. 

These are the things which Charles Louis Napoleon Bona- 
parte did. What he had sworn to do was set forth in the oath 
which he took on the 20th of December, 1848. On that day 
he stood before the National Assembly, and lifting his right 


The oath arm toward heaven thus swore :—‘In the presence 
Pests Hk: ROL ASO and before the French people represented 
taken. ‘by the National Assembly, I swear to remain faith- 


‘ful to the democratic Republic one and indivisible, and to ful- 
‘fill all the duties which the Constitution imposes upon me.’ 
What he had pledged his honor to do was set forth in the 
promise, which of his own free will he addressed to the Assem- 
bly. Reading from a paper which he had prepared, he uttered 
His added * these words :—‘* The votes of the nation, and the 
pnan ofhon. © oath which I have just taken, command my future 
or. ‘conduct. My duty is clear. I will fulfill it as a 
‘man of honor. I shall regard as enemies of the country all 
‘those who endeavor to change by illegal means that which all 
‘France has established.’ 

In Europe at that time there were many men, and several 


Cuap. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 207 


millions of women, who truly believed that the landmarks 
which divided good from evil were in charge of priests, and 
that what Religion blessed must needs be right. 
Now on the thirtieth day computed from the night 
of the 2nd of December, the rays of twelve thousand lamps 
pierced the thick wintry fog that clogged the morning air, 
and shed their difficult light through the nave of the historic 
pile which stands marking the lapse of ages and the strange 
checkered destiny of France. There waiting, there were the 
bishops, priests, and deacons of the Roman branch of the 
Church of Jesus Christ. These bishops, priests, and deacons 
stood thus expecting, because they claimed to be able to con- 
duct the relations between man and his Creator, and the swear- 
er of the oath of the 20th of December had designed to ap- 
prize them that again, with their good leave, he was coming 
into ‘the presence of God.’ And he came. Where the kings 
of France had knelt, there was now the persistent manager of 
the company that had played at Strasbourg and Boulogne, and 
with him, it may well be believed, there were Morny rejoicing 
in his gains, and Magnan soaring high above sums of four 
thousand pounds, and Maupas no longer in danger, and St. Ar- 
naud, formerly Le Roy, and Fialin, more often called ‘ Persig- 
ny, and Fleury the propeller of all, more esger perhaps to go 
and be swift to spend his winnings, than to sit in a cathedral 
and think how the fire of his temperament had given him a 
strange power over the fate of a nation. When the Church 
perceived that the swearer of the oath and all his associates 
were ready, she began her service. Having robes whereon 
all down the back there was embroidered the figure of a cross, 
and being, it would seem, without fear, the bishops and priests 
went up to the high altar, and scattered rich incense, and knelt 
and rose, and knelt and rose again. Then in the hearing of 
thousands there pealed through the aisles that hymn of praise 
which purports to waft info heaven the thanksgivings of a 
whole people for some new and signal mercy vouchsafed to 
them by Almighty God. It was because of what had been 
done to France-within the last thirty days that the Hosannas 
arose in Notre Dame. Moreover the priests lifted their voices 
and cried aloud, chanting and saying to the Most High, Dom- 
ine salvum fac Ludovicum Napoleonem—Oh Lord! save Louis 
Napoleon. 

What is good and what is evil? and who is he that deserves 
the prayers of a nation? If any man, being scrupulous and 
devout, was moved by the events of December to ask these 
questions of his Church, he was answered that day in the Ca- 
thedral of our Lady of Paris. 


The Te Deum. 


208 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XIV. 


In the next December the form of the state system was ac- 
The President Commodated to the reality, and the President of 
peror ofthe the Republic became what men call a ‘ French Em-\ 
French, ‘peror.’ The style that Prince Louis thought fit 
to take was this: ‘ Napoleon the Third, by the Grace of God 
‘and by the will of the people, Emperor of the French.’ 

Of course, when any one thinks of the events of December, 
The inaction 1851, the stress of his attention is apt to be brought 
Poe ct Preugn. LO bear upon those who were actors, and upon 
menatthe those who, desiring to act, were only hindered from 
thereountry Going so by falling into the pits which the trappers 
was falling. had dug for them; but no one will fail to see that 
one of the main phenomena of the time was the willful acqui- 
escence of great numbers of men. It may seem strange that 
during a time of danger the sin of inaction should be found in 
a once free and always brave people. The cause of 
this was the hatred which men had of democracy. 
A sheer democracy, it would seem, is so unfriendly to person- 
al liberty, and therefore so vexing or alarming, not only to its 
avowed political enemies, but to those also who in general are 
accustomed to stand aloof from public affairs, that it must 
needs close its frail existence as soon as there comes home a 
general renowned in arms, who chooses to make himself king. 
This was always laid down as a guiding principle by those 
who professed to be able to draw lessons from history, but 
even they used to think that, until some sort of hero could be 
found, democratic institutions might last. France showed 
mankind that the mere want of such a hero as will answer the 
purpose is a want which can be compensated by a little in- 
genuity. She taught the world that when a mighty nation is 
under a democracy, and is threatened with doctrines which 
challenge the ownership and enjoyment of property, any knot 
of men who can get trusted with a momentary hold of the en- 
gine of State (and somebody must be so trusted) may take 
one of their number, who never made a campaign except with 
counterfeit soldiers, and never fired a shot except when he 
fired by mistake, and may make him a dictator, a lawgiver, 
and an absolute monarch, with the acquiescence if not with 
the approval of a vast proportion of the people. Moreover 
France proved that the transition is not of necessity a slow 
one, and that, when the perils of a high centralization and a 
great standing army are added to the perils of a sheer democ- 

racy, then freedom, although it be hedged round and guarded 
by all the contrivances which clever, thoughtful, and honest 
republicans can devise, may be stolen and made away with 


Its cause. 


5 


Cnar. XIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 209 


in one dark winter night, as though it were a purse or a 
trinket. 

Although France lost her freedom, it would be an error to 
The gentlemen IMagine that upon the ruins of the commonwealth 
of Francere- there was founded a monarchy like that, for in- 
solved to stand : . : 
aloof from the Stance, which governs the people of Russia. In 
Government. empires of that kind the Sovereign commands the 
services of all his subjects. In France, for the most part, the 
gentlemen of the country resolved to stand aloof from the 
Government, and not only declined to vouchsafe their society 
to the new occupant of the Tuileries, but even looked cold 
upon any stray person of their own station who suffered him- 
self to be tempted thither by money. They were determined 
to abide their time, and in the mean while to do nothing 
which would make it inconsistent for them, as soon as it suit- 
ed their policy, to take an opportunity of Jaying cruel hands 
on the new Emperor and his associates. It was obvious that 
The constant because of the instinct which makes creatures cling 
pe anwich to life, a monarch thus kept always standing on 
ates were kept. the very edge of a horrible fate, but still having 
for the time in his hands the engine of the State, would be 
driven by the very law of his being to make use of the forces 
of the nation as means of safety for himself and his comrades ; 
and that to that one end, not only the operations of the Home 
The foreign Government, but even the foreign policy of the 
policy of : P ; 

France was Country, would be steadily aimed. And so it hap- 
used to prop pened. After the 2nd December, in the year 1851, 
throne. . the foreign policy of France was used for a prop 
to prop the throne which Morny and his friends had built up. 

Therefore, although [have dwelt a while upon a singular pas- 
sage in the domestic history of France, I have not digressed. 
The origin of the war with Russia could not be traced without 
showing what was the foreign policy of France at the time 
when the mischief was done; and since it happened that the 
foreign policy of France was new to the world, and was gov- 
erned in all things by the personal exigencies of those who 
wielded it, no one could receive a true impression of-its aim 
and purpose without first gathering some idea of the events. 
by which the destinies of Europe were connected with the 
hopes and fears of Prince Louis, and Morny, and Fleury, of 
Magnan, and Persigny, and Maupas, and Monsieur Le Roy St. 
Arnaud, 


210 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ~ [Cuar. XV. 


CHAPTER XV. 


A.mostT instantly the change which was wrought by these 
Immediateet. French transactions began to act upon Europe. 
fect of thecoup "The associates of the Elysee well understood that 

état upon the 

tranquillity of If they had been able to trample upon France and 
ERE her laws, their success had been made possible by 
the dread which the French people had of a return to tumult; 
and it was clear that, until they could do something more than 
merely head the police of the country, their new power would 
be hardly more stable than the passing terrors on which it 
rested. What they had to do was to distract France from 
thinking of her shame at home, by sending her attention 
abroad. For their very lives’ sake they had to make haste, 
The policy and to pile up events which might stand between 
which it neces- them and the past, and shelter them from the peril to 
ee which they were brought whenever men’s thoughts 
were turned to the night of the 2nd of December and the 
Thursday the day of blood. There could be no hesitating 
about this. Ambition had nothing to do with it. It was mat- 
ter of life and death. If Prince Louis, and Morny, and Fleury, 
if Maupas, St. Arnaud, and Magnan, were to continue quartered 
~upon France instead of being thrown into prison and brought 
to trial, it was indispensable ‘that Eur ope should be disturbed. 
Without delay the needful steps were taken. 

It must have been within a week or two after the comple- 
tion of the arrangements. consequent on the night of the 2nd 
of December that the dispatches went from Paris which caused 
M. de Lavalette to wring from the Porte the Note of the 9th 
The French Of February,! and forced the Sultan into engage- 
Government — ments unfair and offensive to Russia. The French 
coerced the . 2 A A ms 
Sultan into. President steadily continued this plan of driving 
pectures of. /: the «Porte jinto-a quarrel with the Czar until at 
sia. length he succeeded in. bringing about the event,? 
which was followed by the advance of the Russian armies; 
but the moment the Czar was wrought up into a state of anger 
which sufficed to make him a disturber of Europe, Prince 

11852. See ante. 


2 The delivery of the key and the star to the Latin monks at Bethlehem in 
December, 1852. See ante. d 


Cap. XV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 211 


Louis, now Emperor of the French, sagaciously perceived that 
it might be possible for him to take violent means of appeas- 
ing the very troubles which he himself had just raised ; and to 
do this by suddenly declaring for a conservative policy in Tur- 
key, and offering to put himself in concert with one of the great 
Andthen Settled States of Kurope.!. England, he knew, had 
sought an“ always clung to a conservative policy in the East. 
gland. § France, he also knew, of late years had generally 
done the reverse, but then France was-utterly in his power, 
and it seemed to him that, by offering to thrust France into 
an English policy, he might purchase for himself an alliance 
with the Queen, and win for his new throne a sanction of more 
lasting worth than Morny’s well warranted return of his eight 
millions of approving Frenchmen. Above all,if he could be 
united with England he might be able to enter upon that con- 
spicuous action in Europe which was needful for his safety at 
home, and might do this without bringing upon himself any 
war of a dangerous kind. 

Another motive of a narrower sort was urging him in the 
Personal fee. Same direction. Hating freedom, hating the French 
ings of thenew people, and delighting in an incident which he look- 
SPs ed upon as reducing the theory of Representative 
Government to the absurdum, Nicholas had approved and en- 
joyed the treatment inflicted upon France by throwing her 
into the felon’s van and sending her to jail; but he had object- 
ed to the notion of the second Napoleon being called ‘the 
‘Third ;2 and in a spirit still more pedantic, he had refused to 
address the French sovereign in the accustomed form. He 
would call him his ‘ good friend,’ but no earthly power should 
make him add the word ‘brother.’ The taunting society of 
Petersburg amused itself with the amputated phrase, and loved 
to call the ruler of France their ‘ good friend.’ The new Em- 
peror chafed at this, for his vanity was hurt; but he abided 
his time. 

At length, nay so early as the 28th of January, 1853, the 


? December, 1852. 

? It is said, I know not with what truth, that the style of the new Emperor 
was the result of a clerical error. In the course of its preparations for con- 
stituting the Empire the Home Office wished te country to take up a word 
which should be intermediate between ‘ President’? and ‘Emperor,’ so the 
minister determined to order that France should suddenly burst into a ery 
of ‘Vive Napoleon,’ and he wrote, they say, the following order, ‘ Que le mot 
dordre soit Vive Napoleon!!!’ The clerk, they say, mistook the three notes 
of admiration for Roman numerals, and in a few hours the forty thousand 
communes of France had cried out so obediently for ‘Napoleon III.,’ that 
the Government was obliged to adopt the clerk’s blunder. 


212 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuap. XV, 


The French LYench Emperor perceived that his measures had 
Emperor's effectually roused the Czar’s hostility to the Sultan, 
vesetiue the and he instantly proposed to England that the two 
concord of the Powers should act together in extinguishing the 


druvies ix. flames which he himself had just kindled, and should 
gland into 2 endeavor to come to a joint understanding, with a 
separate alli- - 5 Aon ° ° 
ance with him- view to resist the ambition of Russia. Knowing 
tat beforehand what the policy of England was, he all 
at once adopted it, and proposed it to our Government in the 
very terms always used by English statesmen. He took, as it 
were, an ‘old copy’ of the first ‘English speech from the throne 
which came to his hand, and following its words, declared that 
the first object should be to ¢ preserve the integrity of the Otto- 

‘man Empire! From that moment until the summer of 1855, 
and perhaps even down to a still later period, he did not once 
swerve from the great scheme of forming and maintaining an 
offensive alliance > with England against the Czar, and to that 
object he subordinated all other considerations. He had at 
that time the rare gift of being able to keep himself alive to 
the proportionate value of political objects. He knew how to 
give up the less for the sake of attaining and keeping the 
greater. Governed by this principle, he gradually began to 
draw closer and closer toward England; and when the angry 
Czar imagined that he was advancing i in the cause of his Church 
against a Y resolute champion of the “Latins, his wily adversary 
was smiling perhaps with Lord Cowley about the ‘key’ and 
the ‘ cupola,’ and preparing to form an alliance on strictly tem- 
poral grounds. 

It would have been well for Europe if the exigences of the 
persons then wielding the destinies of France would have per- 
mitted the State to rest content with that honest share of duty 
which fell to the lot of each of the four Powers when the in- 
tended occupation of the Principalities was announced. Nei- 
ther the interest nor the honor of France required that in the 
Eastern question she should stand more forward than any oth- 
er of the remonstrant States; but the personal interest of the 
new Emperor and his December friends did not at all coincide 
with the interest of France; for what he and his associates 
wanted, and what in truth they really needed, was to thrust 
France into a conflict, which might be either diplomatic or war- 
like, but which was at all events to be of a conspicuous sort, 
tending to ward off the peril of home politics, and give to the’ 
fabric of the 2nd of December something like station and ce- 


1 “Eastern Papers,’ part i., page 68. 


Cuapr. XV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 213 


lebrity in Europe. In order to achieve this, it clearly would 
not suffice for France to be merely one of a conference of four 
great Powers quietly and temperately engaged in repressing 
the encroachments of the Czar. Her part in such a business 
could not possibly be so prominent, nor so animating as to 
draw away the attention of the French from the persons who 
had got into their palaces and their offices of State. On the 
other hand, a close, separate, and significant alliance with En- 
gland, and with England alone, to the exclusion of the rest of 
the four Powers, would not only bring about the conflict which 
was needed for the safety and comfort of the Tuilerjes, but 
would seem in the eyes of the mistaken world to give the sane- 
tion of the Queen’s pure name to the acts of the December 
night and the Thursday the day of blood. The unspeakable 
value of this moral shelter to persons in the condition of the 
new French Monarch, and St. Arnaud, Morny, and Maupas, can 
never be understood except by those who look back and re- 
member how exalted the moral station of England was in the 
period which elapsed between the 10th of April, 1848, and the 
time when she suffered herself to become entangled in engage- 
ments with the French Emperor. 

It would have been right enough that France and England, 
as the two great maritime Powers, should have come to an 
understanding with each other in regard to the disposition of 
their fleets, but, even if they had been concerting for only that 
limited purpose, it would have been right that the general ten- 
or and object of their naval arrangements should have received . 
the antecedent approval of the two other Powers with whom 
they were in cordial agreement. The English Government, 
however, not only consented to engage in naval movements 
which affected—nay, actually governed—the question of peace 
or war, but fell into the error of concerting these movements 
with France alone, and doing this—not because of any differ- 
ence which had arisen between the four Powers, but—simply 
because France and England were provided with ships; so 
that in truth the Western Powers, merely because they were 
possessed of the implement which enabled them to put a press- 
ure upon the Czar, resolved to act as though they were the 
only judges of the question whether the pressure should be ap- 
plied or not; and this at a time when, as Lord Clarendon de- 
celared in Parliament, the four Powers were ‘all acting cordial- 
‘ly together.’ Of course, this wanton segregation tended to 
supersede or dissolve the concord which bound the four Pow- 
ers, and, as a sure consequence, to endanger yet more than 
ever the cause of peace. Some strange blindness prevented 


214 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [CHar. XV. 


Lord Aberdeen from seeing the path he trod, or rather pre- 
vented him from seeing it with a clearness conducive to action. 
But what the French Emperor wanted was even more than 
this, and what he wanted was done. It is true that neither 
admiration nor moral disapproval of the conduct of princes 
ought to have any exceeding sway over our relations with for-: 
eign States, and if we had had the misfortune to find that the 
Emperor of the French was the only potentate in Europe 
whose policy was in accord with our own, it might have been 
right that closer relations of alliance with France (however hu- 
miliating they might seem in the eyes of the moralist) should 
have followed our separation from the other States of Europe. 
But no such separation had occurred. What the French Em- 
peror ventured to attempt, and what he actually succeeded in 
achieving, was to draw England into a distinct and separate 
alliance with himself—not at a time when she was isolated, but 
—at a mo:ent when she was in close accord with the rest of 
the four Powers. 

Toward the close of the Parliamentary session of 1853, the 
determination on the part of Austria to rid the Principalities 
of their Russian invaders was growing in intensity. Prussia 
also was firm; and in principle the concord of the four Pow- 
ers was so exact, that it extended, as was afterward seen, not 
only to the terms on which the difference between Russia and 
Turkey should be settled, but to the ulterior arrangements 
which might be pressed upon Russia at the conclusion of the 
war which she was provoking. ‘The four great Powers,’ said 
Lord Aberdeen on the 12th of August, ‘are now acting in con- 
‘cert.! ‘In all these transactions,’ said Lord Clarendon,?‘ Aus- 
‘tria, England, Prussia, and France are all acting cordially to- 
‘gether, in order to check designs which they consider incon- 
‘sistent with the balance of power, and with those territorial 
‘limits which have been established by various treaties.’ 

Yet it can not be doubted that in the midst of this perfect 
The nature of concord of the four Powers, the English Govern- 
the under ment was induced to enter into a separate under- 


standing of 
Midsummer, standing with the Emperor of the French.? This 
France and. WaS the fatal transaction which substituted a cruel 
England. _—_ war for the peaceful but irresistible pressure which 
was exerted by the four Powers. The purport of this arrange-. 
ment still lurks in private notes, and in recollections of private 
interviews, but it can be seen that (for reasons never yet ex- 


plained) France and England were engaging to move in ad- 


~ 1129 Hansard, p.1650. * Ibid., p. 1423. . * Ibid., pp. 1424, 1768, 1826. 


CHAP? XV.) BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 215 
vance of the other Powers. The four Powers, being all of one 
mind, were still to remain in concert, so far as concerned the 
discussion and adjudication of the questions pending between 
Russia and Turkey; but France and England were to volun- 
teer to enforce their judgment. The four Powers were to be 
judges, and two of them, namely, France and England, were 
to be the executioners. What made this arrangement the 
more preposterous was that the outrage of which Europe com- 
plained was the occupation of two provinces which abutted 
upon the Austrian dominions. Of all the great Powers, Aus- 
tria was the chief sufferer. Austria was upon the spot. Aus- 
tria was the one Power which instantly and in a summary way 
could force the Czar to quit his hold; and yet the charge of 
undertaking a duty which pressed upon her more than upon 
any other State in Europe, was voluntarily taken upon them- 
selves by two States whose dominions were vastly distant from 
the scene of the evil deed. It was much as though the forces 
of the United States and of Brazil were to come across the At- 
lantic to defend Antwerp from the French, whilst the English 
looked on and thanked their enterprising friends for relieving 
them of their duty. 

There was not perhaps more than one of the members of the 
English Cabinet who desired the formation of this singular al- 
liance on grounds like those which moved the French Empe- 
ror; and it is believed that Lord Aberdeen and several other 
members of the Government were much governed by a shal- 
low theory which had prevailed for some years amongst pub- 
lic men. The theory was that close union between France and 
England was a security for the peace of Europe. ‘Sure I am,’ 
said one confident man, who echoed the crude thought of many, 
‘sure Lam that if the advisers of the Crown in this country act 
‘in cordial concert with the government of the Emperor of the 
‘French, and if the forces of the two countries in the Mediter- 
‘ranean are to act in concert, then it will be almost impossible 
‘that any war can disturb the peace of Europe.’ But of course, 
to men of more statesmanlike views, the main temptation was 
the prospect of seeing France dragged into the policy which 
England had always entertained upon the Eastern Question. 

Perhaps it will be thought that the practice of hiding away 
momentous engagements between States in the folds of private 
notes may now and then justify an endeavor to infer the na- 
ture of an agreement secretly made between two Governments 
from the tenor of their subsequent actions, and from a knowl- 
edge of surrounding facts. If this license were to be granted, 
and if also it were to be assumed that the English as well as 


216 TRANSACTIONS WHICH  __— [Car XV. 
the French Government was negotiating with open eyes, it 
might, perhaps, be laid down that the compact of Midsummer, 
1853, was virtually of this sort :—‘ The Emperor of the French 
‘shall set aside the old views of the French Foreign Office, and 
‘shall oblige France with all her forces to uphold the Eastern 
‘policy of England. In consideration of this sacrifice of French 
‘interests by the French Emperor, England promises to give 
‘her moral sanction (in the way hereinafter prescribed) to the 
‘arrangements of December, 1851, and to take the following 
‘means for strengthening the throne and endeavoring to es- 
‘tablish the dynasty of the Emperor of the French :—1st. En- 
‘oland shall give up the system of peaceful coercion which is 
‘involved in the concerted action of the four Powers, and shall 
‘adopt in lieu of it a separate understanding with France, of 
‘such a kind as to place the two Powers conspicuously in ad- 
‘vance of the others, and in a state of more immediate antag- 
‘onism to Russia with a prospect of eventual war. 2nd. Even 
‘before any treaty of alliance is agreed upon, the Queen of En- 
‘eland shall declare before all Europe that the Emperor of the 
‘French is united with Her Majesty in her endeavors to allay 
‘the troubles now threatening Europe with war; and it shall 
‘not be competent to the English Government to weaken the 
‘effect of this announcement by advising Her Majesty to in- 
‘clude any other Sovereigns in the same statement. If Her 
‘Majesty should continue to be closely in accord with the rest 
‘of the four Powers, she may be advised to speak of them in 
‘general terms as her allies, but they are not to be named. 3rd. 
‘If hostilities should become necessary, the two Governments 
‘will determine upon the measures to be adopted in common, 
“and in that case also it is distinctly understood that the En- 
‘olish Government will advise the Queen not to shrink from 
‘the gratification of receiving the Emperor of the French as 
‘her guest. It is, of course, to be understood (a va sans dire) 
‘that the reception of His Majesty at the English Court is to 
“be in all respects the same as would be the reception of any 
‘other great Sovereign in alliance with the Queen. Whenever 
‘occasion requires it, the other actors in the operations of De- 
‘cember, 1851, shall be received and treated by the English 
‘authorities with the honors due to the trusted servants of a 
‘friendly Power, and without objections founded on the trans- 
‘actions of December, or any of the circumstances of their past 
‘lives.’ These are only imaginary words, but they show what 
the French Emperor was seeking to achieve, and they repre- 
sent but too faithfully what the English Government did. —s_~ 
Every state is entitled to regard a foreign nation as repre- 


Cuap. XV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. ; 217 


sented by its Government. The principle is a sound one; but 
it must be owned that by this alliance the theory was pushed 
to an ugly conclusion. What happened was the like of this :— 


i There came to us five men heavily laden with treasure, but 


looking hurried and anxious. They wanted to speak to us. 
Upon inguiring who they were, and comparing their answers 
with our other means of knowing the truth, we found that two 
of them bore names resulting in the usual way from marriages 
and baptisms,’ and that the other three had been going by 
names which they had chosen for the sake of euphony. They 
said that suddenly they had become so struck with the sound- 
ness of our old-fashioned opinions, that they asked nothing bet- 
ter than to be suffered to devote the immense resources which 
they could command to the attainment of the object which we 
had always desired. All they wanted in return was that, in 
pursuing our own object side by side with them, we would 
promise not to suffer ourselves to be clogged by our old scru- 
ples against breaches of the peace; that we would admit them 
to our intimacy, allowing ourselves to be much seen with them 
in public; and that, in order to make our favor the more signal, 
we would consent to turn aside a little from our old friends. 
That was all. With regard to the question of how they had 
come by their treasure, and all the vast resources they offered 
us, their story was that they had all these things with the ex- 
press consent of the former owner. There was something 
about them which made us fear that, if we repulsed them, they 
would carry their treasures to the very man who, at that mo- 
ment, was giving us trouble. In truth, it seemed that, either 
from us or from somebody else, they must and they would 
have shelter. Upon their hands there was a good deal of 
blood. We shrank a little, but we were tempted much. We 
yielded. We struck the bargain. What we did was not un- 
lawful, for those with whom we treated had for the time a real 
hold upon the people in whose great name they professed to 
come, and, by the custom of nations, we were entitled to say 
that we would know nothing of any France except the France 
that was brought to us by these five persons to be disposed of 
for the purposes of our ‘ Kastern Question ;’ but when we had 
done this thing, we had no wight to believe that, to Europe at 
large—still less to the gentlemen of France—the fair name of 
England would seem as it seemed before. 

But, whatever were the terms of the understanding between 
the two Governments, the result of it was that, the English 


' These two were Prince Louis Bonaparte and Maupas. 


Won. 1K 


218 ; TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XV,. 


Announce. Cabinet, disregarding the policy which only six days 
ment of itto before had united it in a concerted action with the 
Parhament. Powers represented at the Conference, now an- 
nounced through the lips of Lord Palmerston,? ‘that England 
‘and France were agreed, that they continued to follow the 
‘same policy, and that they had the most perfect confidence in 
Failure of Par. ‘each other.’ These words were enough to show 
liament to un- any one used to foreign affairs that England was 
real import of advancing with France into an adventurous policy, 
the disclosure. anqd-then (though even then they were dangerously 
late) Members of Parliament might have stood forward with 
some hope of being able to check their country in her smooth 
descent from peace to war. They lost the occasion. It did 
not recur. 

At the close of the session, the Queen’s Speech announced 
The Queen's tO Europe ‘that the Emperor of the French had 
Speech, Au- united with Her Majesty in earnest endeavors to 
gust, 1898 reconcile differences the continuance of which 
‘might involve Europe in war, and She declared that, acting 
‘in concert with her Allies, and relying on the exertions of the 
‘Conference then assembled at Vienna, Her Majesty had good 
‘reason to hope that an honorable arrangement would speedily 
“be accomplished.’? | 

It would seem at first sight that this language had been oc- 
casioned by some accidental displacement of words, and that 
it could not have been intended for the Queen of England to 
say that she was acting in concert with her Alles assembled 
at Vienna, and to declare in another limb of the same sentence 
that she was ‘ united’ with one of them. Unhappily, the error 
was not an error of words. The speech accurately described 
the strange policy which our Government had adopted; for it 
was strictly true that, in the midst of a perfect concord be- 
tween the four great Powers, the English Cabinet had been 
drawn into a separate union with France, and into a union of 
such a kind as to require the distinguishing phrase which dis- 
closed the new league to Europe. 

This speech from the throne may be regarded as marking 
This marks the point where the roads of policy branched off. 
mete the By the one road England, moving in company with 

ads to peace 3 : 
andtowar the rest of the four Powers, might insure a peaceful 
branched off. repression of the outrage which was disturbing Eu- 
rope. By the other, she might also, enforce the right, but, 
joined with the French Emperor, and parted from the rest of 


1 8th July, 1853, in the House of Commons. ? 129 Hansard, p. 1826. 


‘Cuar. XVI] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 219 


the four Powers, she would reach it by passing through war. 
The Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen desired peace and not war; 
but seeing dimly, they took the adventurous path. They so 
little knew whither they were going, that they made no prep- 
aration for war.} 


CHAPTER XVI. 


Tue difference between a servant and a Minister of State 
Count Nessel- lies in this:—that the servant obeys the orders given 
Bie; him, without troubling himself concerning the ques- 
tion whether his master is right or wrong; whilst a Minister 
of State declines to be the instrument for giving effect to 
measures which he deems to be hurtful to his country. The 
Chancellor of the Russian Empire was sagacious and politic; 
and his experience in the business of the State, and in the 
councils of Europe, went back to the great days when Nessel- 
rode and Hardenburg, and Metternich and Wellington, set 
their seals to the same charter. That the Czar was wrong in 
these transactions against Turkey, no man in Europe knew 
better than Count Nesselrode; and at first he had the courage 
to speak to his master so frankly that Nicholas, when he had 
heard a remark which tended to wisdom and moderation, 
would cry out, ‘That is what the Chancellor is perpetually 
‘telling me.’ But, unhappily for the Czar and for his empire, 
the Minister did not enjoy so commanding a station as to be 
able to put restraint upon his Sovereign, nor even perhaps to 
offer him counsel in his angry mood. He could advise with 
Nicholas the Czar; but there were reasons which made his 
counsels unwelcome to a heated defender of the Greek faith. 
He was a member of the Church of England, and the madden- 
ing rumors of the day made out that into the jaws of this very 
Church of England Lord Stratford was dragging the Sultan 
and all his Moslem subjects. Then, too, Count Nesselrode was 
worldly; but, after all, the quality most certain to make him 
irksome to a Prince in a high state of religious or ecclesiastic 
excitement was his good sense. It was dangerous for a wise, 
able sinner like him to go near holy Nicholas the Pontiff, the 
Head of God’s Orthodox Church upon earth, when he was 
hearing the voices from Heaven, when he was raging against 
the enemies of the Faith, and struggling to enforce his will 


'' See Lord Aberdeen’s evidence before the Sebastopol Committee. 


220 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XVI’ 


upon mankind by utterances of the hated name of Canning,! 
and interjections, and gnashing of teeth. Far from being able 
to make a stand against this consuming fury, Nesselrode did 
not even decline to be the instrument for disclosing to all the 
world his master’s condition of mind. 

When the Czar knew that the fleets of the Western Powers 
State ofthe | Were coming up into the Levant, and that the sword 
zar ater at Of England was now in the hands of Lord Stratford, 


knowing that 3 c 
the fleets of — he was thrown into so fierce a state, that his notions 


ee of what was true and what was not true; of what 
ordered to the was plausible and what was ascertainably false ; 
Dardanelles. Of what was a cause and what was an effect; of 
what happened first and what happened last—nay, almost, it 
would seem, his notions of what was the Bosphorus and what 
was the Hellespont,? became as a heap of ruins. He was in 
the condition imagined by the Psalmist when he prayed the 
Lord that his enemy might be ‘confounded.’ Count Nessel- 
rode was forced to gather up his master’s shivered thoughts, 
and putting them as well as he could into the language of di- 
His complaints Plomacy, to address to all the Courts of Europe 
toEurope. = q wild remonstrance against the measures of the 
Western Powers. The approach of their fleets to an anchor- 
age in the A’gean outside the Straits of the Dardanelles was 
treated in this dispatch as though it were little less than a 
seizure of Constantinople; and it was represented that this 
was an act of violence which had entitled and compelled the 
Czar, in his own defense, to occupy the Principalities.2 Lord 
Clarendon seized this weak pretense and easily laid it bare, for 
he showed that Nicholas, in his anger, was transposing events ; 
and that the Czar’s resolve to cross the Pruth was anterior to 
Their refutae the occurrence which he now declared to have been. 
ot the motive of his action. Then,in language worthy 
of England, our Foreign Secretary went on to vindicate her 
right to send her fleets whither she chose, so long as they were 
on the high seas, or on the coasts of a Sovereign legitimately 
assenting to their presence. Nearly at the same time the 
writer of the French Foreign Office dispatches pursued the 
Czar through Europe with his bright, cutting, pitiless logic. | 

‘ The Czar used to call Lord Stratford ‘Lord Canning.’ 

* The dispatch which gave utterance to this raving treated an anchorage: 
in the Aigean, outside the Dardanelles, as almost a virtual occupation of 
Constantinople. 

* ‘Eastern Papers,’ part i., p. 342. 

* These dispatches bear the signature of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, but it was 
commonly believed at the time that they were written by a man on the per- 
manent staff of the French Foreign Office. . 


Cuar. XVI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 221 


_ Of course, the vivacity of France and England tended to 

place Austria at her ease, and to make her more backward 
than she would otherwise have been in sending her troops into 
the Banat; and moreover, the separate action of the Western 
Powers was well calculated, as will be seen by-and-by, to undo 
The Vienna the good which might be effected by the Confer- 
Conference. ence of the four Powers at Vienna. The Confer- 
ence, however, did not remit its labor. The mediating char- 
acter which belonged to it in its original constitution was grad- 
ually changed, until at length it represented what was nothing 
less than a confederacy of the four Powers against Russia. It 
is true that it was a confederacy which sought to exhaust per- 
suasion, and to use to the utmost the moral pressure of assem- 
bled Europe before it resorted to arms; and it is true also that 
it was willing to make the Czar’s retreat from his false moves 
as easy and as free.from shame as the nature of his late errors 
would allow: but these were views held by the English Cabi- 
net, as well as by the Conference; and it is certain that, if our 
Government had seen clear, and had been free from separate 
engagements, it would have stood fast upon the ground occu- 
pied by the four Powers, and would have refused to be drawn 
into measures which were destined to be continually undoing 
the pacific work of the diplomatists assembled at Vienna. 

But partnership with the midnight associates of the 2nd of 
The effect upon December was a heavy yoke. With all his heart 
Siiny Satan? and soul Lord Aberdeen desired the tranquillity of 
gled inasep- Hurope; but he had suffered his Cabinet to enter 
funding with into close friendly relations with one to whom the 
France. tranquillity of Europe portended jail, and ill usage, 
and death. The French Emperor had consented to engage 
France in an English policy; and he thought he had a right 
to insist that England should pay the price, and help to give 
him the means of such signal action in Europe as might drive 
away men’s thoughts from the hour when the parliament of 
France had been thrown into the felons’ van. 

The object at which the French Emperor was aiming stands 
The French Clear enough to the sight; but at this time the 
Batons acheine scheme of action by which he sought to attain his 
of action. ends was ambiguous. In general, men are prone to 
find out consistency in the acts of rulers, and to imagine that 
numberless acts, appearing to have different aspects, are the 
result of one steady design: but those who love truth better 
than symmetry will be able to believe that much of the con- 
duct of the French Emperor was rather the effect of clashing 
purposes than of duplicity. There are philosophers who im- 


799 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XVI- 


agine that the human mind (corresponding in that respect with 
the brain) has a dual action, and that the singleness of purpose 
observed in a decided man is the result of a close accord be- 
tween the two engines of thought, and not of actual unity. 
Certainly it would appear that the Emperor Louis Napoleon, 
more than most other men, was accustomed to linger in doubt 
between two conflicting plans, and to delay his final adoption 
of the one, and his final rejection of the other, for as long a 
time as possible, in order to find out what might be best to be 
ultimately done by carrying on experiments for many months 
together with two rival schemes of action. 

But, whether this double method of action was the result of 
idiosyncrasy or of a profound policy, it was but too well fitted 
for the object of drawing England into a war. The aim of the 
French Emperor was to keep his understanding with England 
in full force, and yet to give the alliance a warlike direction. 
If he were to adopt a policy frankly warlike, he would repel 
Lord Aberdeen and endanger the alliance. If he were to be 
frankly pacific, there would be a danger of his restoring to En- 
rope that tranquility which could not fail to bring him and his 
December friends into jeopardy. In this strait he did not ex- 
actly take a middle course. By splitting his means of action, 
he managed to take two courses at the same time. There are 
people who can write at the same time with both hands. Po- 
litically, Louis Napoleon had this accomplishment. With his 
left hand he seemed to strive after peace; with his right he 
His diplomacy tried to stir up a war. The language of his diplo- . 
eee meres macy was pacific, and yet, at the very same time, he 

7 contrived that the naval forces of France and En- 


time he en- 
gages Fagland gland should be used as the means of provoking a 
ments tending war. The part which he took in the negotiations 
to provokewar. going on at Vienna, and in the other capitals of the 
great Powers, was temperate, just, and moderate; and it is 
probable that the Dispatches which indicated this spirit long 
continued to mislead Lord Aberdeen, and to keep him under 
the impression that an Anglo-French alliance was really an en- 
gine of peace; but it will be seen that, as soon as the French 
Emperor had drawn England into an understanding with him, 
he was enabled to engage her im a series of dangerous naval 
movements, which he contrived to keep going on simultane- 
ously with the efforts of the negotiators, so as always to be de- 
feating their labors. 

In order to appreciate the exceeding force of the lever which 
was used for this purpose, aman ought to have in his mind the 
political geography of southeastern Europe and the configura- 


Cuap. XVI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 223 


tion of the seas which flow with a ceaseless current into the 
waters of the Atgean. 

The Euxine is connected with the Mediterranean by the 
The Bosphorus StPaits of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and 
andthe Darda- the Straits of the Dardanelles. The Bosphorus is 
carte a current of the sea, seventeen miles in length, and, 
in some places, hardly more than half a mile broad; but so 
deep, even home to the shores on either side, that a ship of 
war can almost, as it were, find shade under the gardens of the 
European shore—can almost mix her spars with the cypresses 
which darken the coast of Asia. At its southern extremity 
the Bosphorus mingles with the waters of the great inlet or 
harbor which still often goes by the name of the Golden Horn ; 
and at length, after passing between Constantinople and its 
beautiful suburb of Scutari, the straits open out into the land- 
locked basin—now known as the Sea of Marmora—which used 
to be called the Propontis. At the foot of this inland sea the 
water is again contracted into a deep channel, no more, in one 
place, than three quarters of a mile in breadth, and is not set 
free till, after a course of some forty miles, it reaches the neigh- 
borhood of the Troad and spreads abroad into the Atgean. 
These last are the famous straits between Europe and Asia, 
which used to be called the Hellespont, and are now the Dar- 
danelles. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles are both so 
narrow that even in the early times of artillery they could be 
commanded by guns on either side, and it followed that these 
The Sultan's waters had not the character of ‘high seas.’ And, 
ancient right since the land upon either side belonged to the Ot- 
them. toman Empire, the Sultans always claimed and al. 
ways enjoyed a right to keep out foreign ships of war from 
both the straits. Now on the Black Sea Russia had as much 
sea-board as Turkey, and, nevertheless, like every other Power, 
she was shut out from all right to send her armed navy into 
Policy of Rus. the Mediterranean through the Bosphorys and the 
siainregardto Dardanelles. There being no other outlet, her 
the straits. Black Sea fleet was pent up in an inland basin. 
Painful as this duress must needs be to a haughty State hav- 
ing a powerful fleet in the Euxine, it would seem that Russia 
has been more willing to submit to the restriction than to see 
the war flag of other States in the Dardanelles or the Bospho- 
rus. The presence of a force greater than her own, or even 
rivaling it, did not comport with the kind of ascendency which 
she was always seeking to establish at Constantinople and on 
the sea-board of the Euxine. Russia, therefore, had been a 
willing party to the treaty of 1841. By this treaty the five 


224 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XVI 


The rights of great Powers acknowledged the right of the Sul- 
the Sultan and tan to exclude armed navies from both the straits; 
the five Pow- ° 
ers under the and, on the other hand, the Sultan engaged that in 
Treaty of 841. time of peace he would always exercise this right 
of exclusion. Moreover, the five Powers promised that they 
would all respect this engagement by the Sultan. The result, 
therefore, was that, whether with or without the consent of 
the Sultan, no foreign squadron, at a time when the Sultan was 
at peace, could lawfully appear in either of the straits.’ But 
How these When the Emperor Nicholas forcibly occupied the 
rights were af. Principalities, it was clear that this act was a just 
fected by the cause of war whenever the Sultan might think fit 
of the Princi- so. to treat it; and there was fair ground for saying 
aya a that, even before a declaration of war, the invasion 
of the Sultan’s dominions was such a violation of the state of 
peace contemplated by the treaty that the Sultan was morally 
released from his engagement, and might be justified in asking 
his allies to send their fleets up through the straits. On the 
other hand, the appearance of foreign navies in the Darda- 
nelles was regarded as so destructive to Russian ascendency 
that the bare prospect of it used to fill Russian statesmen with 
dismay; and the Emperor Nicholas held the idea in such horror 
that the mere approach of the French and English fleets to the 
Levant wrought him, as we have seen, to a state of mind which 
was only too faithfully portrayed by his Chancellor’s Circular. 
It is plain, therefore, that the power of advising the Sultan 
Pitcnd to call up the French and English fleets was an en- 
means of coer- gine of immense force in the hands of the Western 
ing the Czar. Powers, but it is also certain that this was a power 
’ y 
which would put a much harder stress upon Russia whilst it 
was kept.suspended over her than it was likely to do when it 
came to be physically used. ‘To subject Nicholas to the fear 
Importance of Of having to see foreign war-flags in the straits was 
refraining =. to apply a pressure well fitted for coercing him ; 
om a prema- : 
ture use of the but actually to exert the power was to break its 
DOrTET; spell, and to change the Czar’s wholesome dread 
into a frenzy of anger hardly consistent with hopes of peace. 
The French Emperor had no sooner engaged the English 
The naval 0 @OVernment in a separate understanding than he 
movements in began to insist upon the necessity of using the na- 
French bmpe. Val power of France and England in the way which 
evenenges he proposed—a way bitterly offensive to Russia. 
aS Having at length succeeded in forcing this measure 
' There were exceptions in favor of vessels having on board the Represent- - 
atives of foreign States. 


Cuarv. XVI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 225 


upon England, he, after a while, pressed upon her another 
movement of the fleets still more hostile than the first, and 
again he succeeded in bringing the English Government to 
yield to him. Again, and still once again, he did the like, al- 
ways in the end bringing England to adopt his hostile meas- 
ures; and he never desisted from this course of action until at 
last it had effected a virtual rupture between the Czar and the 
Western Powers. t 

Not yet as part of this narrative, but by way of anticipation, 
Proofs of this 20d in order to gather into one page the grounds 
drawn (inan- of the statement just made, the following instances 
Ince eat of are given of the way in which the English Govern- 
the narrative) ment was from time to time driven to join with the 
from transac- : ‘ 
tions subse. French Emperor in making a quarrelsome use of 
quent ro ue the two fleets: — On the 13th of July, 1853, the 
Queen's French Emperor, through his Minister of Foreign 
ae . Affairs, declared to the English Government that if 
the occupation of the Principalities continued, the French fleet 
could not longer remain at Beshika Bay; on the 19th of Au- 
gust he declared it to be absolutely necessary that the com- 
bined fleets should enter the Dardanelles, and he pressed the 
English Government to adopt a resolution to this effect. On 
the 21st of September he insisted that the English Govern- 
ment, at the same moment as the French, should immediately 
order up the combined squadrons to Constantinople. On the 
15th of December he pressed the English Government to 
agree that the Allied fleets should enter the Euxine, take pos- 
session of it, and interdict the passage of every Russian vessel. 
It will be seen that, with more or less reluctance, and after 
more or less delay, these demands were always acceded to by 
England; and the course thus taken by the Maritime Powers 
was fatal to the pending negotiations, for, besides that in the 
way already shown the OCzar’s wholesome fears were convert- 
ed into bursts of rage, the Turks, at the same time, were de- 
riving a dangerous encouragement from the sight of the French 
and English war-flags; and the result was, that the negotia- 
tors, with all their skill and all their patience, were riever able 
to frame a Note in the exact words which would allay the an- 
ger of Nicholas without encountering a steadfast resistance on 
the part of the Sultan. 

Some men will believe that a long series of acts all having 
a tendency in the same direction, and ending at length in war, 
were deliberately planned by the French Emperor as a means 
of bringing about the result which they effected, and that the 
temperate.and sometimes conciliatory negotiations which were 


> al 


K 2 


226 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuav. XVII. 


carried on during the same period were a mask to the real in- 
tent. It is perhaps more likely to be true that the French 
Emperor was all this time hesitating, and keeping his judg- 
ment in suspense. What he needed for his very life’s sake 
was to become so conspicuous, whether as a disturber or as a 
pacifactor of other nations, that Frenchmen might be brought 
to look at what he was doing to others instead of what he had 
done to them; and if he could have reached to this by seeming 
to take a great ascendant in the diplomacy of Europe, it is 
possible that for a while at least he might have been content 
to spare the world from graver troubles; but, 
Means well ° : 
fitted foren- Whether he acted from design or under the impulse 
forcing a just —— sot ’ 1t 4 494 
peace weteso Of Varying and conflicting. wishes, it is certain that 
used as to pro- that command of naval power which was an engine 
Wye of excellent strength for enforcing the restoration 
of tranquillity, was so used by his orders and under his per- 
suasion as to become the means of provoking a war. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


Lorp STRATFORD, it would seem, was unconscious of his 
power over the mind of Nicholas, and did not understand that 
Tord Strat. 26 rested with him to determine whether the Czar 
ford's scheme should be politic or raging. He did not know 
of pacification. that as long as he was at Therapia, every deed, ev- 
ery word of the Divan was regarded as coming from the En- 
glish Ambassador, and that the bare thought of the Greek 
Church in Turkey being under the protection of ‘Canning,’ 
was the very one which would at any moment change the 
Czar from an able man of business to an almost irresponsible 
being. Taking the complaints of Russia according to their 
avowed meaning, the English Ambassador faithfully strove to 
remove every trace of the foundation on which they rested ; 
and having caused the Porte to issue firmans perpetuating all 
the accustomed privileges of the Greek Church, he proposed 
that copies of these firmans should be sent to the Court of St. 
Petersburg, together with a courteous Note from the Porte 
to Count Nesselrode, distinctly assuring the Chancellor that 
the firmans confirmed the privileges of the Greek Church in 
perpetuity, and virtually, therefore, engaging that the grants 
should never be revoked.!' This was doing exactly what Rus- 


120th July, 1853. ‘Eastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 15. 


Cuap. XVII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 227 


sia ostensibly required; but it was also doing exactly that 
which the Czar most abhorred, for to his mind it indicated 
nothing less than that the Greek Church was passing under 
the gracious protection of Lord Stratford. The polished court- 
esy of the Note imparting this concession only made it the 
more hateful, by showing on its face whence it came. How- 
ever, Lord Stratford obtained for his plan the full approval 
of his French, Austrian, and Prussian colleagues, as well as of 
the Porte, and the Note, signed by Reshid Pacha, and inclos- 
ing copies of the new firmans, was dispatched to Vienna, with 
a view to its being thence transmitted to St. Petersburg. The 
packet which held these papers contained the very ingredients 
which were best fitted for disturbing the reason of the Czar. 
It happened, however, that at Vienna there were men who 
knew something of the psychological part of the Eastern Ques- 
tion, and they took upon themselves to arrest the maddening 
Note in its transit. 

And now the representatives of the four Powers conferring 
in the Austrian capital succeeded in framing a document which 
soon became known to Europe under the name of the ‘ Vienna 
The ‘Vienna ‘Note.’ This paper, framed originally in Paris, was 
apepte.: perfected and finally approved by all the four Pow- 
ers conferring at Vienna. It was a draught of a Note under- 
stood to be brought forward by Austria in her mediating ca- 
pacity, and proposed to be addressed by the Porte to the Rus- 
Agreed to by Sian Government. The parties to the Conference 
the four Pow- believed that the engagements purporting to be 
en made by the Note made on the part of the Sultan 
might satisfy the Czar without endangering the true interests 
of Turkey. Indeed, the Austrian Government, somewhat for- 
getting its duty as a faithful mediator, had used means of as- 
certaining that the Note would be acceptable to Russia,! but 
without taking a like step in favor of the other disputant. 
Accepted by Copies of the Note thus framed were sent for ap- 
Russia. proval to St. Petersburg and to Constantinople, and 
the acceptance of the arrangement was pressed upon the Govy- 
ernments of the two disputing States with all the moral weight 
which the four great Powers could give to their unanimous 
award. 

And here it ought to be marked, that at this moment the 
The French French Emperor did nothing to thwart the resto- 
Emperor does. yation of tranquillity. He perhaps believed that if 


nothing to 3 hey ° J 
thwart the suee a@ Note which had originated in Paris were to be- 


1 ‘astern Papers,’ part ii., p. 27. 


228 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuap. XVII. 


cessofthe come the basis of a settlement, he might found on 
Fa this circumstance a claim to the glory of having 
pacified Europe, and in that wholesome way might achieve 
the sort of conspicuousness which he loved and needed.  Per- 
haps he was only obeying that doubleness of mind which made 
him always prone to do acts clashing one with another. But, 
whatever may have been the cause which led him for a mo- 
ment to intermit his policy, it is just to acknowledge that he 
seems to have been faithfully willing to give effect to the 
means of pacification which were proffered by the ‘ Vienna 
‘Note. It soon became known that the Note was agreed to 
by the Emperor Nicholas. Men believed that all was settled. 
It was true that the courier who was expected to be the bear- 
er of the assent of the Porte had not yet come in from Con- 
stantinople, but it was assumed that the representatives of the 
four Powers had taken the precaution of possessing them- 
selves of the real views of the Turkish Government, and be- 
sides, it was thought impossible that the Sultan should under- 
take to remain in antagonism to Russia, if the support which 
he had hitherto received from the four great Powers were to 
be transferred from him to the Czar. | 
Those who dwell far away from great cities can hardly per- 
haps believe that the touching signs of simplicity whieh they 
observe in rural life may be easily found now and then in the 
councils of assembled Europe. The Governments of all the 
Lord Stratfora fOur Powers, and their representatives assembled at 
had not been Vienna, fondiy imagined that they could settle the 
consulted. dispute and restore tranquillity to Europe without 
consulting Lord Stratford de Redclitfe. They framed and dis- 
patched the Note without learning what his opinion of it was, 
and it is probable that a knowledge of this singular omission 
may have conduced to make the Czar accept the award of the 
mediating Powers, by tempting him with the delight of seeing 
Lord Stratford overruled. But, on the other hand, the one 
man who was judge of what ought or ought not to be con- 
ceded by the Turks was Lord Stratford, and it is plain that. 
any statesmen who forgot him in their reckoning must have 
been imperfect in their notion of political dynamics. It would 
be wrong to suppose that a sound judgment by the four Pow- 
ers would be liable to be overturned by Lord Stratford from 
any mere feeling of neglect. He was too proud, as wellas too 
honest, to be capable of such a littleness. What was to be ap- 
prehended was that, until it was ratified by the English Am- 
bassador at the Porte, the decision of a number of men in Vi- 
enna, and Paris, and London, and Berlin, might turn out to be 


Cuap. XVII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 229 


really erroneous, or might seem to be so in the eyes of one who 
was profoundly versed in the subject; and no man had a right 
to make sure that, even at the instance of all Europe, this 
strong-willed Englishman would consent to use his vast per- 
- sonal ascendency as a means of forcing upon the Turks a sur- 
render which he held to be dangerous. 

Karly in August the Vienna Note reached Constantinople ; 
and the Turkish Government soon detected in it, not only a 
misrecital of history, but words of a dangerous sort, conveying, 
or seeming to convey to Russia, under a new form, that very 
protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey which had br ought 
about the rupture of the negotiation conducted by Prince 
Mentschikoff. The four Powers, however, had determined to 
press the acceptance of the arrangement upon the Porte, and — 
on the 12th it became known at Constantinople that the Note © 
had been accepted by the Emperor Nicholas. On the same 
day the English Ambassador received instructions from Lon- 
don, which informed him that the English Government ‘ad- 
The‘Vienna ‘hered to the Vienna Note, and considered that it 
nage nthe ‘fully guarded the principle which had been con- 
Stratford, ‘tended for, and might therefore with perfect safety 
‘be signed by the Porte,’ and Lord Clarendon went on to ex- 
press a hope that the Ambassador would have ‘found no diffi- 
‘culty in procuring the assent of the Turkish Government to a 
‘project which the allies of the Sultan unanimously concurred 
‘in recommending for his adoption.”! 

It can not be doubted that Lord Stratford’s opinion as to 
the effect of the Vienna Note was opposed to that of his Gov- 
ernment,” but it was his duty to obey. He obeyed. He ‘scru- 
‘pulously abstained from expressing any private opinion of his 
‘fon the Note whilst it was under consideration at the Porte,’ 
-and he conveyed to the Turkish Government the desire of Eu- 
rope. ‘I called the attention of Reshid Pacha,’ said he, ‘to 
‘the strong and earnest manner in which the Vienna Note was 
‘recommended to the acceptance of the Porte, not only by Her 
‘Majesty’s Government, but also by the Cabinets of Austria, 
‘France, and Prussia. I reminded him of the intelligence which 
‘had been received from St. Petersburg, purporting that the 
‘Emperor of Russia had signified his readiness to accept the 
‘same Note. I urged the importance of his engaging the Porte 
‘to come to a decision with the least possible delay. [-repeat- 
‘edly urged the importance of an immediate decision, and 
‘the danger of declining, or only accepting with amendments, 


' ‘Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 27. ? Ibid., pp. 72, 82. 


230 TRANSACTIONS WHICH fCnar. XVI. 


‘what the four friendly Powers so earnestly recommended, and 
‘what the Cabinet of St. Petersburg had accepted in its actual 
“state.’! . 

These were dutiful words. But it is not to be betieved that, 
even if he strove to do so, Lord Stratford could hide his reai 
thoughts from the Turkish Ministers. There was that in his 
very presence which disclosed his volition; for if the thin dis- 
ciplined lips moved in obedience to constituted authorities, 
men who knew how to read the meaning of his brow, and the 
light which kindled beneath, would gather that the Ambassa- 
dor’s thought concerning the home Governments of the five 
great Powers of Europe was little else than an angry ‘ quos 
‘ego! The sagacious Turks would look more to these great 
_ signs than to the tenor of formal advice sent out from London ; 

and if they saw that Lord Stratford was in his heart against 
the opinion of Europe, they would easily resolve to follow his 
known desire, and to disobey his mere words. The result was 
The Turkish that, without any signs of painful doubt, the Turk- 
Government ish Government determined to stand firm. They 
reject it unless Quietly introduced into the draft the modifications 
altoid which they deemed to be necessary for extracting 
its dangerous quality, and resolved that unless these changes 
were admitted they would altogether reject the Note. They 
were supported by the unanimous decision of the Great Coun- 
cil. 

It might seem that with Lord Stratford and the Turkish 
Lord Stratford Government on one side, and all the rest of Europe, 
ae ee ** including England herself, on the other, the pre- 
Europe. ponderance would be soon determined; and Lord 
Clarendon remonstrated against the obstinacy of the Turks in 
terms which approached to a disapproval of all that had lately 
been done at Constantinople ;2 but Europe was in the wrong, » 
and Lord Stratford and the Turks were in the right; and, 
happily for the world, a strong man and a good Cause make a 
formidable conjunction. Lord Stratford did not fail to show 
his Government that the objections of the Turks to the pro- 
posed Note were well founded ; and Europe was compelled to 
remember that the Russian demand still had in it the original 
vice of wrongfully seeking to extort a treaty in time of peace. 

On the 19th of August, the Porte declined to accept the Vi- 
enna Note without introducing into it the required 


They are firm. s : ° 
alterations. These alterations were rejected by 


* ¢Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 69. ® Thid., p. 91. 
3 Ibid., p. 80. A copy of the ‘ Vienna Note,’ and of the alterations insist- 
ed upon by the Turks, is given in the Appendix, in order to show the exact 


Cuap XVII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 231 


Russia; and, for a moment, Europe was threatened with the 
mortification of seeing that the question of peace or war was 
to depend upon a mere verbal criticism, and a criticism, too, 
in which the English Government at first supposed that the 
Turks were wrong.! It happened, however, that, in the course 
Nesselrode Of the discussion, Count Nesselrode argued against 
which hows, the alterations proposed at Constantinople in lan- 


which shows 
the soundness guage which avowed that the meaning and intent 


Peau soecnen’ of Russia coincided with that very inter pretation 
to the Note. which had been fastened upon the Note by the sa- 
gacity of the Turks; and, the Governments of the four Pow- 
ers being then obliged to acknowledge that they were wrong, 
and that Lord Stratford and the Turks were right, the ques- 
tion which brought about the final rupture between Russia 
and the Porte was virtually the same as that which had caused 
The Protecto. tle departure of Prince Mentschikoff from Constan- 
rate ofthe tinople. What Russia still required, and what the 
in Turkey was Lorte still refused to grant, was the protectorate 
still the thing of the Greek Church in Turkey. 

ms At length, with the advice of a Great Council at- 
tended by a hundred and seventy-two of the foremost men of 
The Porte de. the Empire, the Porte determined upon war. A 
clares war. declaration was issued, which made the farther con- 
tinuance of peace dependent upon the evacuation of the Prin- 
cipalities; and the Russian General there commanding was 
summoned to withdraw his troops from the invaded provinces 
within fifteen days. He did not comply with the demand; 
and, on the 23rd of October, 1853, the Sultan was placed in a 
state of war with the Emper or of Russia. 

But meanwhile the preachers of the Grehtsdloe Church, and 
Warlike spirit the preachers of Islam, had not been idle. In Rus- 
cnte In fae. Sia, the piety and the spirit of the people had been 
Gast hed... dor estalled by the consuming evil of a vast standing 

een forestall- 

ed. army, and crushed down by police and by drill. 
The Government had already taken so much by sheer compul- 
sion, that the people, however brave and pious, had little more 
that it was willing to offer up in sacrifice. It was not thus in 
Warlike ardor the Ottoman Empire. Through the vast and scat- 
or the people of tered dominions of the Sultan, the holy war had not 
Empire. been preached in vain. There, religion, and love of 
country, and warlike ardor were blent into one ennobling sen- 
timent, which was strong enough, as was soon shown, to ‘make 
men arise of their own free will, and endure long toil ‘and cruel 
difference of words which brought about the final rupture between Russia 
and the Porte. ' *Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 91. 


232 _ TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XVIT 


hardships, that they might attain to some battle-field or siege, 
and there-face death with joy. And, under the counsels and 
ascendency of Lord Stratford, this ardor was so well guided 
that it was kept from breaking out in vain tumult or outrage, 
and was brought to bear in all its might upon the defense of 
the State. ‘A spirit of self-devotion,’ wrote the Ambassador, 
‘unaccompanied with fanatical demonstrations, and showing 
‘itself amongst the highest functionaries of the State, bids 
‘fair to give an extraordinary impulse to any military enter- 
‘prise which may be undertaken against Russia by the Turk- 
‘ish Government. The corps of Ulema are preparing to ad- 
‘vance a considerable sum in support of the war. - The Grand 
‘Vizier, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and other leading 
‘members of the Administration, have resigned a large pro- 
‘portion of their horses for the service of the artillery. Re-en- 
‘forcements continue to be directed toward the Danube and 
‘the Georgian frontier. If hostilities commence, they will be 
‘prosecuted in a manner to leave, on one side or on the other, 
‘deep and durable traces of a truly national struggle.” 

But if the Turkish Empire was still the Caliphate; and if 
Moderation of Teligion still gave the watchword which brought 
the Turkish many races of men to crowd to the same standard, 
Government. yet the Porte, chastened by the adversity of the 
latter century, and disciplined by the English Ambassador, had 
become so wise and politic, that it governed the beating heart 
of the nation, and suffered no fanatic words to go out into 
Christendom. The duty of the Moslem now called to arms, 
for his Faith was preached with a fervor sufficing for all mili- 
tary purposes; but the Proclamation which announced that 
the Sultan was at war abstained from all fierce theology. Re- 
iterating the poignant truths which placed the Porte in the 
right and the Czar in the wrong, it kept to that tone of mod- 
eration which had hitherto marked all the State Papers of the 
Its effect on Lurkish Government. But this very moderation 
the mind of the seemed always to kindle fresh rage in the mind of 

ve the Emperor Nicholas, and to fetch out his religious 
zeal. The reason perhaps was, that in all wisdom, and all mod- 
eration evinced by the Divan, he persisted in seeing the evil 
The Czars hand of Lord Stratford. In his Proclamation, he 
Proclamation. ascended to ecstatic heights:—‘By the grace of 
‘God, We, Nicholas I., Emperor and Autocrat of All the Rus- 
‘sias, make known :—By our Manifesto of the 14th of June, 
‘we acquainted our well-beloved and faithful subjects with the 


1 ‘Kastern Papers,’ part il., p. 167. 


Cuap. XVIII. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 233 


‘motives which have compelled us to demand of the Ottoman 
‘Porte inviolable guarantees in favor of the sacred rights of 
‘the Orthodox Church . . . Russia is challenged to the fight; 
‘nothing therefore farther remains for her but, in confident re- 
‘liance upon God, to have recourse to arms, in order to compel 
‘the Ottoman Government to respect treaties, and obtain from 
‘it reparation for the offenses by which it has responded to our 
‘most moderate demands, and to our legitimate solicitude for 
‘the defense of the Orthodox faith in the East, which is equally 
‘professed by the Russian people. We are firmly convinced 
‘that our faithful subjects will join the fervent prayers which 
‘we address to the Most High, that His hand may be pleased 
‘to bless our arms in the holy and just cause which has ever 
‘found ardent defenders in our pious ancestors. ‘In Thee, O 
‘« Lord, have I trusted; let me not be confounded for ever!” ”} 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


Tur Emperor Nicholas still sought to prolong the ambi- 
The Czar an- guity of his relations with Turkey. On the 31st 
meee et 1 Of October, Count Nesselrode issued a Circular to 
be farther pro- the representatives of Russia at foreign Courts, in 
voked he will : . itl ahh 
be content to which he declared that, notwithstanding the decla- 
veel ‘ma- ration of war, and as long as his master’s dignity 
‘tee’andre- and his interests would permit, Russia would ab- 
AERIS stain from taking the offensive, and content herself 
offensive. with holding her position in the Principalities until 
she succeeded in obtaining the satisfaction which she re- 
quired. This second endeavor to contrive a novel kind of 
standing-ground between real peace and avowed war was 

; ; > . a5 2 
destined, as will be seen, to cause fresh discord between Rus- 
sia and the Western Powers. 

The negotiations for a settlement were scarcely interrupted, 
The negotia. elther by the formal declaration of war or by the 
rons ar con- hostilities which were commenced on the banks of 
inued, and are 
ripening to- the Danube; and the Conference of the four Pow- 
ment, when, TS represented at Vienna had just agreed to the 


they are ruin- terms of a collective Note, which seemed to afford 
e ° . 
Western Pow. 2 basis for peace, when the English Government 


ers, - gave way to the strenuous urgency of the French 


1 ¢Hastern Papers,’ part 1i., p. 228. 


234 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XVII 


Emperor, and consented to a measure which ruined the pend- 
ing negotiations, and generated a series of events leading 
ptr raight to a war between Russia and the Western Powers. 

In the month of September, some weeks before the Sultan’s 
final rupture with the Czar, the pious and warlike ardor then 
kindled in the Turkish Empire had begun to show itself at 
Movementas ©OnStantinople. A placard, urging the Govern- 
Constantin ment to declare war, was pasted on one of the 
Pie. mosques. Then a petition for war was presented 
to the Council and to the Sultan himself, by certain muderris, 
or theological students. The paper was signed by thirty-five 
persons, of no individual distinction, but having the corporate. 
importance of belonging to the ‘Ulemah.’ Though free from 
menace, the petition, as Lord Stratford expressed it, was word- 
ed in ‘serious and impressive terms, implying a strong sense 
‘of religious duty, and a very independent disregard of conse- 
‘quences.’ The Ministers professed to be alarmed, and to be- 
lieve that this movement was the forerunner of revolution ; 
and Lord Stratford seems to have imagined that their alarm 
The use made Was genuine. It is perhaps more likely that they 
on this by the were skillfully making the most of these occur- 
isters. rences, with a view to embroil their maritime allies 
in the approaching war; for, when they went to the Ambas- 
sadors, and asked them to take part in measures for the main- 
tenance of public tranquillity, their meaning was that they 
wished to see,the fleets of France and England come up into 
the Bosphorus; and they well knew that if this naval move- 
ment could be brought to pass before the day of the final rup- 
ture between Russia and the Porte, it would be regarded by 
the Czar as a flagrant violation of treaty. 

A curious indication of the sagacity with which the Turk- 
ish Ministers were acting is to be found in the difference be- 
tween their language to the English Ambassador and their 
language to M. de la Cour. In speaking to Lord Stratford, 
they shadowed out dangers impending over the Eastern world, 
the upheaving of Islam, the overthrow of the Sultan’s authori- 
ty. Then they went str aight to M. de la Cour, and drew a 
small vivid picture of massacred Frenchmen. They did not, 

said M. de la Cour, conceal from him, ‘that the persons and 
‘the interests of his countrymen would be exposed to grave 
idatigers, which they were sensible they were incapable of 
‘pr eventing , by reason of the want of union in the Ministry 
‘and the threats directed against themselves.’ This skillful 


1 “astern Papers,’ part ii., p. 115. 


Cuar. XVIIL.J BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 235 


discrimination on the part of the Turkish Ministers seems to 
show that they had not at all lost their composure. 

Hither by their real dread, or by their crafty simulation of 
They succeed it, the Turkish statesmen succeeded in infecting M. 
name = de la Cour with sincere alarm. He was easily 
Ambassador. brought to the conclusion that ‘the state of the 
‘Turkish Government was getting worse and worse; and that 
‘matters had got to such a state as to cause dread of a ca- 
‘tastrophe, of which the inhabitants, Rayahs or Europeans, 
“would be the first victims, and which would even threaten 
‘the Sultan’s throne.! He called upon the English Ambassa- 
dor to consult as to what was best to be done; and both he 
and the Austrian Internuncio expressed their readiness to join 
with him in adopting the needful measures. 

Lord Stratford does not seem to have suspected that the use 
Composure of Which the Turkish Ministers were making of their 
Lord Stratford. Divinity students was in the nature of a stratagem 3 
but, assuming and believing their alarm to be genuine, he was 
still proof against the infection, and retained his calm. In- 
deed, he seems to have understood that a cry for war on the 
part of the religious authorities was a healthy sign for the Em- 
pire. He expressed to his colleagues his readiness to act in 
concert with them; but he said he was reluctant to take any 
step which was not clearly warranted by the necessities of the 
case, and that he desired to guard against mistake and exag- 
geration, by gaining a more precise knowledge of the grounds 
for alarm. He deprecated any joint interference with the 
Turkish Government; and was still less inclined to join in 
bringing up the squadrons to Constantinople, without more 
proofs of urgent peril than had been yet obtained; but he sug- 
Wis wise ana 2CSted, as an opinion of his own, that, the represent- 
guarded meas- atives of the maritime Powers should obtain from 
luring the their respective Admirals such an addition of steam 
peace ofthe force as would secure them from any immediate at- 
Spe tack, and enable them to assist the Government in 
case of an outbreak threatening its existence, without attract- 
ing any unusual attention, or assuming an air of intimidation.? 
This was done. <A couple of steamers belonging to each of 
the great Western Powers quietly came up to Constantinople. 
Tranquillity followed. Every good end was attained, without 
ostentation or disturbance, without the evil of seeming to place 


1 ‘Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 115. j 

? The steam force of the maritime Powers already in the Golden Horn con- 
sisted of vessels which had passed the Dardanelles by virtue of exceptions 
contained in the treaty of 1841. 3 ‘astern Papers,’ part ii., p. 121. 


236 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XVIII. 


the Sultan’s capital under the protection of foreign Powers; 
and above all, without breaking through the Treaty of 1841 in 
a way which, “however justifiable it might be in point of inter- 
national Jaw, clearly tended to force on a war. 

But the rade rie and guarded policy of Lord Stratford at 
Constantinople was quickly subverted by a pressure which the 
The Frenen  LYench Emperor found means of putting upon the 
Emperor. His advisers of the Queen. Of course an understand- 
tine a preeae 1G With a foreign Power is in its nature an abate- 
upon the En- ment of a nation’s free agency; and a statesman 
ghsh cabinet. may be honest and wise in consenting to measures 
which have no other excuse than that they were adopted for 
the sake of maintaining close union with an Ally. England 
had contracted a virtual alliance, and when once she had taken 
this step, it was needful and right that she should do and suf- 
fer many things rather than allow the new friendship to be 
chilled. But this yoke was pressed hard against her. It was 
not the wont of England to be causelessly led into an action 
which was violent and provoking of violence. It was not her 
wont to rush forward without need, and so to drive through a 
treaty that many might say she broke it. It was not her wont 
to be governed in the use of her fleets by the will of a foreign 
Sovereign. It was not her wont to hear from a French Am- 
bassador that a given movement of her Mediterranean squad- 
ron was ‘indispensably necessary,’ nor to be requested to go 
to such a conclusion by ‘an immediate decision.’ It was not 
her wont to act with impassioned haste, where haste was dan- 
gerous and needless. It was not her wont to found a breach 
with one of the foremost Powers of Europe upon a mere hys- 
terical message addressed by one Frenchman to another. But 
the French Emperor had a great ascendant over the English 
Government, for the power which he had gained by entangling 
it in a virtual alliance was augmented by the growing desire 
for action now evinced by the English people. He knew that 
at any moment he could expose Lord Aberdeen and his col- 
leagues to a gust of popular disfavor by causing it to be known 
or imagined that France was keen, and that England was lag- 
ging behind. 

When M. de la Cour’s account of his sensations reached 
Paris, it produced so deep an impression that the French Em- 
peror, either feeling genuine alarm, or else seeing in his Am- 
bassador’s narrative an opportunity for the furtherance of his 
designs, determined to insist in cogent terms that the English 
Government should join him in overstepping the treaty of 
1841, and ordering the Allied squadrons to pass the Darda- 


Car. XVIIT.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 934 


nelles and anchor in the Bosphorus. On the 23rd of Septem- 
Violent urgen- Der, Count Walewski had an interview with Lord 
arate, Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon at the same time 
French Empe- j ‘ Piod a 
ror foranad- and then, after speaking of the crisis at Constanti- 
yance of the nople which M. de la Cour’s dispatch had led the 
stantinople. Hrench Government to expect, he said that his 
Government thought it ‘indispensably necessary that both 
‘fleets should be ordered up to Constantinople ;? and his Ex- 
cellency added, ‘that he was directed to ask for the immediate 
‘decision of Her Majesty’s Government, in order that no time 
‘might be lost in sending instructions to the Ambassadors and — 
‘ Admirals.”? 

Now, at the time of listening to these peremptory words, 
Needlessness the English Government had received no account 
of the meas- from their own Ambassador of the apprehended 
ee disturbances, but they knew that the fleets at the 
mouth of the Dardanelles, being already under orders to obey 
the requisitions of the Ambassadors, could be instantly brought 
up to Constantinople without any farther orders for that pur- 
pose being sent from home. Moreover, the very dispatch 
which brought the alarm showed that the Ambassadors knew 
how to meet the danger, and that they had already called up 
that portion of the fleet which they deemed it prudent to have 
in the Golden Horn. From first to last, the power which 
France and England had intrusted to their representatives at 
the Porte had been used with admirable prudence, and it is 
hard to understand how it could have seemed right to with- 
draw, or rather supersede, the discretion hitherto committed 
to the Ambassadors by sending out an absolute order for the 
advance of the fleets. As it stood, the fleets would go up the 
moment they were wanted; and what the French Emperor 
now required was that, whether they were wanted or not, and 
in defiance of the treaty of 1840, they should immediately pass 
the Dardanelles. Either the Queen’s Government had lost its 
Its tendency to: composure, or else, when they gave way to this de- 
bring on war. mand of the French Emperor, and consented to a 
needless? measure which operated as a sharp provocative of 
war, the Queen’s Government went through the bitter duty of 
taking a step not right in itself, but forced upon them by the 
stringency of the new alliance. 

‘T told Count Walewski,’ says Lord Clarendon, ‘that no in- 
‘telligence of the nature referred to by M. de la Cour had been 

1 ¢Hastern Papers,’ part il., p. 114. 

* Needless, because the authority to call up the fleets when they were 
wanted was already vested in the ambassadors. 


2388 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XVIII. 


‘received from Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and that so long 
‘as the Porte did not declare war against Russia, and desire 
‘the presence of the British fleet, it was the intention of Her 
‘Majesty’s Government to observe the treaty of 1841; but 
‘Lord Aberdeen and I concurred in stating to Count Walew- 
‘ski that under such circumstances as those reported by M. de 
‘la Cour the provisions of any treaty must necessarily, and as 
‘a matter of course, be set aside.’ And then, unhappily, Lord 
Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon went on to tell Count Walew- 
The English Ski‘ that they would, without hesitation, take upon 
_ Government —¢ themselves to agree to the proposal of the French 
French Empe- ‘Government that the Ambassadors should be in- 
7 ‘structed to call up the fleets to Constantinople for 
‘the security of British and French interests, and if necessary 
‘for the protection of the Sultan.”! 

In compliance with the promise thus obtained from him, 
Fleet ordered ord Clarendon on the same day addressed a dis- 
upto Constan- patch to Lord Stratford, saying: ‘ Your Excellency 
ee ‘is therefore instructed to send for the British fleet 
‘to Constantinople,’ thus depriving the Ambassador of the 
discretion which had hitherto been used with singular care 
and wisdom, and with great advantage to the public service. 
Want of firm. What makes the course of the English Government 
ness and dis- ¢he more extraordinary is that they rushed into the 
cretion evinced : : : ok cs : : : 
inthe adoption hostile policy which is involved in this stringent 
ofthemeasure. order to Lord Stratford without having received 
any dispatch of their own from Constantinople, and without 
any knowledge of the events which had been there occurring, 
except what was conveyed by a telegraphic message from a 
French Ambassador to his own Government. If the English 
Ministers had paused five days,? they would have received 
Lord Stratford’s calm dispatch, showing that he looked with 
more pleasure than alarm upon the petition of the theological 
students; and that he knew how to avail himself of force with- 
out using violence. If they had waited four days more,‘ they 
would have found that the hour was at hand when the fleets 
might enter the Dardanelles without any violation or seeming 
violation of treaty ; and in fact it happened that this ill-omen- 
ed order for the entry of the squadrons into the Dardanelles 
was carried into effect at a moment when a delay of less than 
twenty-four hours would have made their entry clearly con- 
sistent with a due observance of the treaty of 1841; for they 

1 ¢Fastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 114. 3 [bid., p. 116. 


3 2. e. till 28th September. Ibid., p. 121. 
4 7. e. till 2nd October. Ibid., p. 127. 


Cuap. XVII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 239 


entered the Dardanelles on the 22nd, and on the following day 
the Sultan, being then at war with Russia, was released from 
the engagement which precluded him (so long as he was at 
peace) from suffering foreign fleets to come up through the 
Straits. 

Baron Brunnow remonstrated in strong terms against the 
Baron Brun. etry of the fleets into the Dardanelles as a breach 
now’s remon- Of the treaty of 1841; and although he was well an- 
ria swered by Lord Clarendon so far as concerned the 
mere question of right, no endeavor was made to mitigate by 
words the true import of the measure, and, in truth, it was of 
so hostile a nature as not to be susceptible of any favorable in- 
terpretation ; for, although the apprehension ‘of disturbance at 
Constantinople might be a sufficing ground for the step, the 
order to the Ambassadors was not made dependent upon the 
occurrence of any such disturbances, nor even upon any al- 
leged fear of them, but was peremptory and absolute in its 
terms, and was made applicable—not to such a portion of the 
naval forces as might be requisite for insuring the peace of the 
city, but—to the whole of the Allied squadrons. 

When the tidings of this hostile measure reached St. Peters- 
Effect of the burg they put an end for the time to all prospect 
measure at St. Of peace, and even Count Nesselrode, who had hith- 
Petersburg —_ erto done all he could venture in the way of resist- 
ance to his master, now declared with sorrow that he saw in 
the acts of the British Government a ‘settled purpose to hu- 
‘miliate Russia.’ He spoke in sorrow, and his thoughts, it 
would seem, went back to the times when he had sat in great 
Count Nessel- COUNnciIs with Wellington. ‘He spoke,’ says Sir 
rode’s sorrow. lamilton Seymour, ‘ with much feeling of the hor- 
‘rors of war, and particularly of war between two powerful 
‘countries—two old allies like England and Russia—countries 
‘which, whilst they might be of infinite use to one another, 
‘possessed each the means of inflicting great injury upon its 
‘antagonist, and ended by saying that if for any motives known 
‘to him war should be declared against Russia by England, it 
‘would be the most unintelligible and the least justifiable war 
‘ever undertaken.”! 

The Czar received tidings of the hostile decision of the mar- 
The Czar’s de- 1time Powers in a spirit which, this time at least, 
termination to was almost justified by the provocation given. In 
his Black Sea Tetaliation for what he would naturally look upon 
a as a bitter affront, and even as a breach of treaty, 


1 ¢Eastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 180. 


240 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XVIII. 


he determined, it would seem, to have vengeance at sea whilst 
vengeance at sea was still possible, and it was under the spur 
of the anger thus kindled that orders for active operations were 
given to the fleet at Sebastopol.1. The vengeance he meditated 
he could only wreak upon the body of the Turks, for the great 
offenders of the West were beyond the bounds of his power. 
It was long believed in England that the disaster at Sinope 
Error ofthe Was a Surprise stealthily contrived by the Emperor 
notion thatthe Nicholas, and it is certain that the event fell upon 


disaster of Si- aie ne 
nopewasa the maritime Powers as a sudden shock; but it is 


achieved by not true that concealment was used by Russia. On 
stealth. the contrary, it seems that the attack was preceded 
by a long-continued ostentation of naval force. In the middle 
Ostentations Of the month of November, and at a time when the 
publcliy ofthe Allied squadrons were anchored in the Bosphorus, 
tions inthe the Sebastopol fleet came out and was ranged in a 
Black Sea. —_ kind of cordon, stretching from north to south across 
the centre of the Black Sea. So early as the 20th of Novem- 
ber the Russian cruisers captured the ‘ Medora,’ a Turkish 
steamer,” and about the same time they boarded a merchant- 
man, and relieved the captain of a portion of his cargo, and of 
the whole of his cash ;3 and the Russians were so far from en- 
tertaining any idea of secr ecy or concealment, that they seem 
to have hailed neutral merchantmen for the purpose of inquir- 
ing about the French and English fleets in the Bosphorus, and 
asking ‘ exultingly’ if the captures which the Russian fleet had 
effected were known at Constantinople.4 

Full ten days® before the fatal 30th of November, a Russian 
Tidings ofan force of seven sail and one war-steamer was cruis- 
ear er ing in sight of Sinope, and hovering over the Turk- 
Russian fleet. jsh squadron which lay there at anchor. An ex- 
press, dispatched from Samsoon by land on the 22nd, bore tid- 
ings of this to Lard Stratford, and it must have reached him, 


it would seem, by the 25th or 26th. On Wednesday the 23rd 


This conclusion is drawn from dates. The hostile resolution of the West- 
ern Poavers was known to the Czar a little before the 14th of October, and 
about the middle of the following month the Black Sea fleet was at sea. If 
allowance be made for distance and preparation, it will be seen that the se- 
quence of one event upon the other is close enough to warrant the statement 
contained in the text. In the absence, however, of any knowledge to the 
contrary, it is fair to suppose that the Czar remembered his promise, and did 
not sanction any actual attack upon the enemy unless his commanders should 
be previously apprized that the Turks had commenced active warfare. 

* *Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 315. 3 Tbid., p. 316. * Ibid., p. 315. 

° Ibid. So early as the 22nd the appearance of the squadron was de- 
scribed as having occurred ‘‘some days back.” 


Cuae. XVIII.) BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 241 


the Commander of the Turkish squadron descried a Russian 
force of seven sail and two steamers coming down under a 
northeast wind toward Sinope. The Turkish ships were clear- 
ed for action, but after some manceuvring, the Russian force 
stood out to windward and gained an offing. On the follow- 
ing day six. Russian ships of the line, with a brig and two 
steamers, again made their appearance, and three of them un- 
der easy sail stood toward the port of Sinope until the even- 
ing. ‘In fine,’ writes the Turkish Commander, ‘six sail of the 
‘line, a brig, and two steamers, are constantly off the port above 
‘mentioned, and at one time they he-to, and another they beat 
‘about. From six to eight frigates, and two steamers, have 
‘been seen off the port of Bartin and Amasbre, and this news 
‘is certain. Besides, the great naval port of the enemy is near. 
‘He may, therefore, receive re-enforcements or attack us with 
‘fire-ships. That being the case, if re-enforcements are not sent 
‘to us, and our position continues the same for some time— 
‘may God preserve us from them!—it may well happen that 
‘the Imperial fleet: may incur disasters.’! ! 

The power and habit of concentrating all energy in a single 
Inaction of the Channel of action was one of the qualities which 
Ambassadors gave force and grandeur to Lord Stratford in the 
rals, field of diplomacy, but it also seems to have had 
the effect of preventing him from casting a glance beyond the 
range of his profession, and it is curious that when the exigen- 
cies of the time called upon him to perform duties not com- 
monly falling within the sphere of a diplomatist, his mind re- 
fused to act. England and France, without the wholesome 
formality of a treaty, had glided into an engagement to defend 
‘Constantinople, or any other part of the Turkish territory, 
‘whether in Europe of in Asia, that might be in danger of at- 
‘tack? So much of this grave duty as consisted in originating 
a resolve to put forth the naval strength of the Allies remain- 
ed committed to the two Ambassadors, but it was of course 
understood that any plans for active measures would be con- 
certed between them and the Admirals; and since the nature 
of the duty which they might be called upon to undertake was 
known of course to the Admirals, it must be adjudged that it 
was incumbent upon them, as well .as upon the two Ambassa- 
dors, to take measures for ascertaining whether the Russians 
were preparing to operate against the coasts of Turkey. More- 
over the English Ambassador had been instructed by his Gov- 
ernment that ‘if the Russian fleet were to come out of Sebas- 


1 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 313. . ese? Thid.,-p. 143. 
Vor. L—L 


242 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuap. XVIIQ 


‘topol, the fleets would then as a matter of course pass through 
‘the Bosphorus,”! and, implicitly, this instruction required that 
measures should be taken for ascertaining whether the Czar’s 
naval forces were in harbor or at sea, for if they were gone to 
sea, that was an event which (according to the orders from 
home) was to be the ground of a naval operation. 

Yet not only were. no measures taken for ascertaining the 
truth, but the rumors of great naval operations in the Black 
Sea, and the dispatch of the 22nd, announcing that the Russian 
squadron was hovering over Sinope, and even the dispatch 
containing the touching appeal of the Turkish Commander at 
Sinope, all alike failed to draw men into action. This last dis- 
patch was communicated to Lord Stratford on the 29th. Even 
then an instant advance of the steam squadrons might not have 
been altogether in vain; for, though the attack commenced on 
the 30th, the Russian fleet did not quit Sinope until the 1st of 
December. Yet nothing was done. Nothing but actual in: 
telligence of the disaster was cogent enough to lift an anchor: 
What Lord Stratford says of the causes of all this inaction 
ought to be stated in his own words. Writing on the 4th of 
December, he says, ‘ Rumors of Russian ships of the line being 
‘at sea have occasionally prevailed for some time. Uncertain- 
‘ty of information, a wish to avoid as long as possible the 
‘chances of a collision, the arrival of a new French Ambassa- 
‘dor, and the state of the weather, were natural causes of de- 
‘mur in coming to a decision as to sending the squadrons into 
‘the Black Sea at this time of the year ;? but even supposing 
that there were reasons which justified hesitation in sending the. 
squadrons to sea, the Home Governments of the Western Pow- 
ers were entitled to ask why some humbler means of ascertain- 
ing the truth were never resorted to, and why no measures 
followed upon the receipt of the alarming dispatch from Sam: 
soon, or even upon the appeal for help which had come from 
the Turkish Commander at Sinope. 

On the 30th of November, Admiral Nachimoff, with six sail 
The disaster Of the line, bore down upon the Turkish squadron 
of Sinope. —_— still lying at anchor in the port of Sinope. There 
was no ship of the Jine in the Turkish squadron. It consisted 
of seven frigates, a sloop, a steamer, and some transports. 
The Turks were the first to fire, and to bring upon their little 
squadron of frigates the broadsides of six sail of the line; and, 
although they fought without hope, they were steadfast. Ei- 
ther they refused to strike their colors, or else, if their colors 


1 «Eastern Papers,’ part ii., p.143. © ° Ibid., p.311. 3 Ibid., p. 305. 


—_ 


Cuap. XIX.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 243 


went down, the Russian Admiral was blind to their signal and 
continued to slaughter them. Except the steamer, every one 
of the Turkish vessels was destroyed. It was believed by men 
in authority that 4000 Turks were killed, that less than 400 
survived, and that all these were wounded.! The feeble bat- 
teries of the place suffered under the enemy’s fire, and the town 
was much shattered.1. The Russian fleet did not move from 
Sinope until the following day.} 

This onslaught upon Sinope and upon vessels lying in port 
was an attack upon Turkish territory, and was therefore an 
attack which the French and English Ambassadors had been 
authorized to repel by calling into action the fleets of the 
Western Powers. Moreover this attack had been impending 
for many days, and all this while the fleets of the Western 
Powers had been lying still in the Bosphorus, within easy 
reach of the scene of the disaster. The honor of France was 
wounded. England was touched to the quick. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


Erruer from sheer want of forethought, or else in tender- 
Chaem in the 2CSS to the feelings of men who shunned the bare 
é e ae Pe 
instructions thought of a collision, the Governments of France 
rite. and England had omitted to consider the plight in 
pit Waxtatn which they would stand if, under the eyes of their 
naval commanders, a Russian admiral should come 
out from Sebastopol and crush a Turkish squadron in the midst 
of the Black Sea. It is true that this was not the event which 
had occurred, for the onslaught of Sinope was ‘an attack upon 
‘Turkish territory,’ and was therefore within the scope of the 
instructions from home. But it is also true that the Govern- 
ments of Paris and London had not committed, either to their 
Ambassadors or their Admirals, any power to take part in a 
naval engagement against Russia upon the open sea; and it 
was obvious that this chasm in the instructions furnished a 
ground of palliation to the Ambassadors and the naval com- 


manders; for, after all the angry negotiations that had taken 


place between Russia and the Western powers, a French or 
an English Admiral might naturally be loth to go watching 
the movements of a fleet which, so long as it was upon the 


1 ¢‘Hastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 305. 


244 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XTX. 


open sea, he was not empowered to strike, and might be hon- 
orably reluctant to move out into the Euxine and run the risk 
of having to witness a naval engagement between the ships of 
the Czar and of the Sultan, without being at liberty to take 
part in it, unless it chanced to be fought within gunshot of 
the Turkish coast. But exactly in proportion as this excuse 
tn proportion 10F the Ambassadors and Admirals was valid, it 
n proportion ° 

as this would tended to bring blame upon the home Govern- 
palliate the je ments of France and England. The honest rage 


inaction of the ‘ 
phd tensa of the English people was about to break out, and 
bring blame there were materials for a rough criticism of men 
upon the home engaged in the service of the State. Some might 
overnment. 

blame the home Government, some: the Ambassa- 
dor, some the Admiral; but, plainly, it would fare ill with any 
man upon whom the public anger might light. 

On. the 11th of December, the tidings of Sinope ‘reached 
Reception of | Paris and London. ‘The French Government felt 
Steer ce ths the bitterness of a disaster ‘endured, as it were, 
French Gov- ‘under the guns of the French and English fleets.”! 
trike pespe =n England, the indignation of the people ran to a 
in England. height importing a resolve to have vengeance, and 
if it had been clearly understood that the disaster had resulted 
from a want of firm orders from home, the Government would 
have been overwhelmed. But the very weight and force of 
the public anger gave the Government a means of eluding it. 
The torrent had so great a volume that it was worthy to be 
turned against a foreign State. The blaming of Ministers, and 
The anger of Ambassadors, and Admirals, and the endless con- 
hope a flict which would be engendered by the apportion- 
yonecsromatrment of censure, all might be superseded by sug- 
age:, and gesting instead a demand for vengeance against 
prought to Russia. The terms of Count Nesselrode’s Circular 
Czar. of the 31st of October? had given ground for ex- 
pecting that, until provoked to a contrary course, the Czar, 
notwithstanding the Turkish declaration’ of war, would remain 
upon the defensive; and the people in England were now 
taught, or allowed to suppose, that Russia had made this at- 
tack upon a Turkish squadron in breach of an honorable un- 
derstanding virtually equivalent to a truce, or, at all events, to 
an arrangement which would confine the theatre of active war 
to the valley of the Lower Danube. This charge against Rus- 
An unjust sia was unjust; for, after the issue of the Circular, 


charge against : : 
the Czar gains the Government of St. Petersburg had received in- 


1M. Drouyn de Lhuys. | ‘ Eastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 299. ? See ante. 


Onar, XIX] BROUGHT ON 'THE WAR. 245 


full beliefin  telligence not only that active warfare was going 
eels on in the valley of the Lower Danube, but that the 
Turks had seized the Russian fort of St. Nicholas, on the east- 
ern coast of the EKuxine, and were attacking Russia upon her 
Armenian frontier. After acts of this warlike sort had been 
done, it was impossible to say with any fairness that Russia 
was debarred from a right to destroy her enemy’s ships; and 
it must be acknowledged also, as I have already said, that the 
destruction of the Turkish squadron at Sinope was not a thing 
done in stealth. But the people of England, not knowing all 
this at first, and hearing nothing of the Russian fleet until they 
heard of the ravage and slaughter of Sinope, imagined that the 
blow had come sudden as the knife of an assassin. They were 
too angry to. be able to look upon the question in a spirit of 
cold justice. It was therefore an easy task to turn all atten- 
tion from the faults of public functionaries and fasten it upon 
a larger scheme of vengeance. Ministers, Ambassadors, and 
Admirals went free, and, in a spirit of honest, inaccurate jus- 
tice, the Emperor Nicholas was marked for sacrifice. This 
time, it was his fate to be condemned on wrong grounds; but 
his sins against Europe had been grievous, and the rough dis- 
pensations of the tribunal which people call ‘ opinion’ have 
often enough determined that a man who has been guilty of 
one crime shall be made to suffer for another. There were 
few men in England who doubted that the onslaught of Sinope 
was a treacherous deed. 

When the Cabinet met to consult upon the questions raised 
First decision by the tidings from Sinope, it came to the conclu- 
Capa. sion that the fleets of the Western Powers would 
gard to Sinope. forthwith enter the Euxine, and the majority were 
of opinion that the instructions addressed to the English Ad- 
miral on the 8th of October, re-enforced by a warning that such 
a disaster as Sinope must not be repeated, would be still a suf- 
ficing guide. But Lord Palmerston saw that, even if this res- 
Lord Palmer. Oluttion. was suited to the condition of things on the 
ston resigns shores of the Bosphorus, it would find no mercy at 
ert home. In truth, he was gifted with the instinct 
which enables a man to read the heart of a nation. He saw, 
he felt, he knew that the English people would never endure 
to hear of the disaster of Sinope, and yet be told that nothing 
was done. He resigned his office. The residuum of the Cab- 
inet determined to leave the English Admiral under the guid- 
ance of his own instructions. , 

But on the 16th of December the Emperor of the French once 
more approached the Government. of the Queen with his subtle 


246 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuapr. XIX. 


Proposal of the and dangerous counsels. The armed conflict of 
pero. Em- States in these times is an evil of such dread propor- 
tions that it seems wise to uphold the solemnity ofa 
transition from peace to war, and to avoid those contrivances 
which tend to throw down the great landmark; for experience 
shows that statesmen heartily resolved upon peace, may never- 
theless be induced to concur in a series of gentle steps which 
Danger of Slowly and gradually lead down to war. ‘The ne- 
breaking down ootiations for a settlement between Russia and Tur- 
the old barriers 
between peace key had not only been revived, but were far from 
and pt: being at this time in an unpromising state; and 
it is probable that if Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone had 
been called upon to say whether they would observe peace 
faithfully, or frankly declare a war, they would scarcely have 
made the more violent choice. But the alternative was not 
presented to the minds of the Queen’s Ministers in this plain 
and wholesome form. 

The ingenious Emperor of the French devised a scheme of 
Ambiguous -2Ct10N SO ambiguous in its nature that, at the option 
character of | of any man who spoke about it, it might be called 
the proposal. either peace or war, but so certain nevertheless in 
its tendency that the adoption of it by the maritime Powers 
would blot out all fair prospect of maintaining peace in Eu- 
rope. He proposed to give Russia notice ‘that France and 
‘England were resolved to prevent the repetition of the affair » 
‘of Sinope, and that every Russian ship thenceforward met in 
‘the Euxine would be requested, and if necessary constrained, 
‘to return to Sebastopol, and that any act of aggression after- 
‘ward attempted against the Ottoman territory or flag would 
‘be repelled by force.’ ‘This proposal involved, without ex- 
pressing it, a defensive alliance with Turkey against Russia, 
and, if it were adopted, the Emperor of Russia would have to 
see his flag driven from the waters which bounded his own 
dominions. It was so framed that Lord Palmerston would 
~ know it meant war, whilst Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone 
might be led to imagine that it was a measure rather gentle 
than other wise, which perhaps would keep peace in the Euxine. 
Indeed the proposal seemed made to win the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, for it fell short of war by a measure of distance 
which, though it might seem very small to people with com- 
mon eyesight, was more than broad enough to afford commo- 
dious standing-room to a man delighting, as he did, in refine- 
ments and slender distinctions. 


1 “Eastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 307. 


Cuar. XIX. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 944 


The Emperor of the French pressed this scheme upon the 
The French English Cabinet with his whole force. He not only 
Emperor urged it by means of the usual channels of diplo- 
presses upon ° * * . ° 
the English Matic communication, but privately desired Lord 
Saint. Cowley ‘to recommend it in the strongest terms to 
‘the favorable attention of Her Majesty’s Government as a 
‘measure incumbent upon himself and them to take,’ and he 
avowed ‘the disappointment which he should feel if a differ- 
‘ence of opinion prevented its adoption.’ This language is 
cogent. It is also significant; and to one who can read it by 
the light of a little collateral knowledge it may open a glimpse 
of the relations subsisting between the French Court and pub- 
lic men in England. 

On the 17th, the English Government had taken a step in 
pursuance of the decision to which the majority of the Cabi- 
net had come; but:on the following day they. were made ac- 
quainted with the will of the French Emperor. It would seem 
that there was a struggle in the Cabinet, but by the 24th all 
Lord Aber. resistance had broken down, and the first decision 
deen's Cabinet of the Government was overturned. The proposal 
Yaoptz, with a Of the French Emperor closed in like a net round 
stshtaddition, the variegated group which composed Lord Aber- 

p) aE . 

Emperors | deen’s Ministry, and gathered them all together in 
ens its supple folds. Some submitted to it for one 
reason, and some for another; but the pressure of the French 
Emperor was the cogent motive which governed the result. 
Still, this time, though the pressure was inflicted by the hand 
of a ‘foreign sovereign, it was after all from the English people 
themselves that the French Emperor drew his strongest means 
of coercion. Their indignation at the disaster of Sinope made 
him sure that he could bring ruin on Lord Aberdeen’s Admin- 
istration, by merely causing England to know that her Gov- 
ernment was shrinking from the hostile scheme of action which 
he had proposed. 

The result however was that now, for the second time, 
Batic dictated to England the use that she should make of 
her fleet, and by this time perhaps submission had become 
more easy than it was at first. The Ministry, with much open- 
ness, acknowledged that they were acting without the war- 
rant of their own n judgment, and in deference to the will of the 
French Emperor. ‘The Government,’ said Lord Clarendon, 
‘having announced that the recurrence of a disaster such as 
‘that at Sinope must be prevented, and that the command of 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p. 307. 


248 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XX. 


‘the Black Sea must be secured, would have been content to 
‘have left the manner of executing those instructions to the 
‘discretion of the Admirals; but they attach so much import- 
‘ance not alone to the united action.of the two Governments, 
‘but to the instructions addressed to their respective agents 
‘being, precisely the same, that they are prepared to adopt 
‘the specific mode of action now proposed by the Government 
Lord Patmer. Of the Emperor.’ This being resolved, Lord Pal- 
ston withdr. ws merston consented to return to office.? With the 
his resignaion. 4 dition of a proviso that for the present the Sul- 
tan should be engaged to abstain from aggressive operations 
on the Euxine, instructions exactly in accord with the French 
Orders toexe. Lumperor’s proposal were forthwith sent out to 
cutethescheme the Bosphorus, and at the same time the French 
nounce it at st. and English representatives at St. Petersburg were 
Petersburg. —_ ordered to communicate this resolution to Count 
Nesselrode. ro fies 


CHAPTER XX. 


AFTER much labor, the representatives of the. four Powers 
Terms of set- at Constantinople had. agreed upon,a scheme of set- 


tlement agreed 


to by the four tlement, which they deemed likely to be acceptable 


Powers and _ 
Peto to the Emper or Nicholas, and they pressed its adop 


acceptance of tion by the Porte. The warlike spirit of the Otto- 
et cin man people had been rising day by day ; and it be- 
ford. came very hard and dangerous for the Government 
to venture upon entertaining a negotiation for peace; but Lord 
Stratford had power over the minds of Turkish Statesmen ; 
and he exerted it with so great a force, that, although it was 
now impossible for them to obey him without haying to face a 
religious insurrection, they obeyed him nevertheless. The fury 
of the armed divines, insisting upon the massacre of worldlings, 


was less terrible to them than the anger of the Eltchi.. To his 


* ‘Eastern Papers,’ part li., p. 321. 

* His secession during these ten or twelve days was afterward stated by 
him to have been based upon a question of home politics, but it would not of 
course follow from this statement that no other motives were governing him, 
and when it is remembered that his resignation was simultaneous with the 
first resolution of the Cabinet, and that his return to office coincided with 
the Cabinet’s adoption of the French Emperor’s scheme, it will hardly be 
questioned that the four events may be fairly enough placed in an order 
which suggests the relation of cause and effect. 


Cuar. XX. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 249 


will they bent. Not only the Turkish Cabinet, but even the 
Great Council of State, was brought to accept the terms pro- 
posed. The difficulty, nay, the peril of life which had thus 
Grounds for been encountered by the Turkish Ministry for the 
caneablesolu- SAke of making peace with Russia; the success 
tion. achieved at Sinope; and some victories gained over 
the Turks on the Armenian frontier—all these were circum- 
stances tending to assuage the mortification inflicted upon the 
Czar by the failure of Prince Mentschikoff’s mission. Again, 
it had long been plain that the time was ill fitted for the pro- 
motion of any scheme of Russian ambition ; and it was known 
that the English Ambassador had brought the Turks to the 
utmost verge of possible concession... Moreover, terms of ar- 
rangement, agreed to by the Turkish Government, were about 
to be pressed upon the Czar, with all the authority of the four 
great Powers. It might seem, therefore, that all things were 
conducing toward an amicable settlement. Nor was this hope 
at all shaken when the Government of St. Petersburg was made 
acquainted with the first and unbiased decision to which the 
English Government had come after hearing of the disasters 
of Smope. <Apprized by his private letters of the tenor of this 
decision, Sir Hamilton Seymour gathered or inferred that the 
Admirals of the Western Powers being enjoined to prevent 
the recurrence of an attack like the attack of Sinope, would 
assert the command of the Black Sea; and when he imparted 
to the Russian Government the impression thus produced on 
Friendly re. his mind, his communication was received in a wise 
ception by the and friendly spirit by Count Nesselrode; for after 
ernment of the hearing that the Western Powers would be likely 
Bersior tha to assume the command of the Black Sea, the Count 
of the English ‘ expressed his belief that the Russian fleet would, 
Titi ‘in consequence of the advanced season, be little 
‘likely to leave Sebastopol;’ and he then went on to suggest 
that, if the Russians were to be hindered from attacking the 
Turks, it would be fair that the Turks should be restrained 
from molesting the coast of Russia. The rest of the conver- 
sation related to the pending negotiations ; and, upon the whole, 
it was plain that the first decision of the English Cabinet was 
looked upon as the natural result of the engagement at Sinope, 
that it would certainly not lead to a rupture,’ and that at length 
the Russian Government was in a fit temper to receive the 
proposals for peace which the four Powers (with the concur- 
rence, this time, of Lord Stratford, and with the extorted assent 


‘ The terms were finally accepted on the 31st of December, 1853. ‘ Kast- 
ern Papers,’ part li., p. 362. ® Ibid., p..359, 


L.2 


250 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Crar. XX. 


of the Turks) were now again bringing to St. Petersburg. But, 
Announcement Whilst this fair prospect was opened by the unceas- 
at St. Peters- ing toil of the negotiators, there were messengers 
urg of the ° 5 . 

scheme finally then journeying from Paris and from London to the 
adopted by the Court of St. Petersburg; and they carried an an- 
ers. nouncement that the Western Powers were resolved 
to execute the harsh and insulting scheme of action which had 
been forced upon the acceptance of Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet 
by the Emperor of the French. Of course it was not to be 
expected that the friendly spirit in which the Russian Goy- 
ernment had received the first and unbiased decision of the 
English Cabinet would even for one moment survive an an- 
nouncement of the scheme which only some ten days later our 
Government had been brought to adopt. It was one thing for 
the Western Powers to enforce the neutrality of the Black 
Sea; and another, and a very different thing, to announce to 
the sovereign of a haughty State, that, even though he might 
be bent on no warlike errand, still, upon the very sea which 
washed his coast—upon the very sea which filled his harbors— 
he was forbidden to show his flag. 

On the 12th of January, 1854, the Emperor Nicholas was 
forced to hear—to endure to hear—that, upon peril of an un- 
equal conflict with the combined fleets of the Western Pow- 
ers, every ship that he had in the Euxine must either be kept 
from going to sea, or else must sail by stealth, and be liable to 
The negotia. 2 1gnominiously driven back into port. The ne- 
tions are ruin- Otiation, Which had seemed to be almost ripe for 
tia a settlement, was then ruined. The Emperor Nich- 
olas did not declare war against the Western Powers; but, as 
soon as he received the hostile announcement in a form which 
Rupture of ai. H€ deemed to be official, he withdrew his represent- 
plomatic rela- atives from Paris and London. The Governments 
Hae: of France and England followed his example; and 
on the 21st of February, 1854, the diplomatic relations between 
Russia and the Western Powers were brought to a close. 
The Czar pre. Moreover, the Czar prepared to undertake an inva- 
Spe invade sion of the Ottoman dominions. 
enter the Eux- On the 4th of January, 1854, the fleets of England 
me and France moved up and entered the Euxine. 


Rauf fik), 019 sfoder tcl ‘Mpiesis orld Ye ctmlen od! yatimoihai exmvani(l 


Fitegioniy a siatdretl ecls Yo aelanpn500 Plato a Miasr ag) ans Cd Writ apyct 


ys eA A 30 Ones 


eer P gethartit? Ares’ > eA) Vs olind's OAT cinde Asie at oft BSCE ~ 
Ne a “ F “hak Gives SAb ko & 9A) betes 1 
kn ‘getoanety 49% % Abrgie tT Malar osn WHO 5 a7 pit pidbsrsal4 
a a AYR yt 20d) MI ON ~ az) cs 


= :; 
: a ) 
hee - Waabigs A 
Ns “fs ren 9 ene Os ; 
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ie Lan ge ~ Eo a bh 
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) fe sees 
—. \ 5 
: A Aap 
fy bog Os 
b e | 7 
ae {HOALA cs 
Se Oe — 
meme A ; 
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a 


Diagram indicating the nature of the straits in which the Czar placed himself by at- 
tempting to maintain a hostile occupation of the Danubian Principalities without the as- 
sent of Austria. 


The tapering of the lines which show the route of the Czar’s intruding forces is intended 
to remind the reader of the hourly decreasing strength of an invader who operates at a 
vast distance from his main resources. 


: ST PETERSBURG O 
rl 

f . 

H ‘WARSAW. 

&, | 


| 


(} 
mm 


Cuap. XXI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 253 


CHAPTER XXI. 


In a military point of view, and upon the supposition of 
Military er- there being no understanding between Russia and 
in ccetpying” Austria, the seizure of the whole of Wallachia by 
Wallachia. a Russian army is a dangerous measure; for, after 
reaching Bucharest, the line of occupation has to bend at right 
angles, ascending the northern bank of the Danube between 
an enemy expectant and an enemy already declared, till at 
length it touches the frontier of the Banat at a distance from 
Moscow of not less than a thousand miles. To be in fitting 
strength at a point thus situate would imply the possession 
of resources beyond those which Russia could command. 

- The General at the head of the Turkish army was Omar 
Of this Omar Pasha; and it chanced that he was a man highly 
Paes, Skilled in the art of bringing political views to bear 
tage. upon the operations of an army in the field. He 
knew that, in protruding his forces into Lesser Wallachia, the 
Emperor Nicholas was committing a military fault; and he 
also inferred that political reasons and imperial vanity would 
make the Czar cling to his error. He also knew that, for the 
rest of that year, the Czar, being kept back by the engagements 
which he had taken, by his fear of breaking with the four 
Powers, and, above all, by the insufficiency of his means, would 
abstain from any farther invasion of Turkey, and would even 
be reluctant to alarm Europe by allowing the least glimpse of 
a Russian uniform to appear on the right bank of the Danube. 
Omar saw that the river had thus become a political barrier 
which protected the Turks from the Russians, without protect- 
ing the Russians from the Turks. He could therefore over- 
step the common rules of the art of war; and disporting him- 
self as he chose on the line of the Danube, could concentrate 
forces on his extreme left, without any fear for his centre or 
his right. 

~ Therefore, in the early part of the autumn, a large portion 
Hisautumn Of the Turkish army was quietly drawn to Widdin, 
and winter a town on the right bank of the river, in the west- 
eumpasn®- — ernmost angle of Bulgaria; and, on the fifth day 
from the declaration of war, Omar Pasha was over the Danube, 
intrenching himself at Kalafat, and so established that, he faced 


254 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Car. XXL 


toward the east, and confronted the extreme flank of the in- 
truding army.? From that moment Nicholas ceased to be the . 
undisturbed holder of the territory which he had chosen to 
call his ‘material guarantee. His pride was touched. Tor- 
tured by the thought that his power to hold the pledge was 
challenged by a Turkish officer, he began to exhaust his 
strength in efforts to assemble a force at the westernmost 
point of his extended flank. This was the error which Omar 
Pasha wished him to commit. At the close of the year, the 
Czar had succeeded in pushing a heavy body of troops into 
Lesser Wallachia; and in the beginning of January the lines 
of Kalafat were attacked by General Aurep. The struggle 
lasted four days; but it ended in the retreat of the Russian 
forces ; and, considering the vast distance between the lines of 
Kalafat and the home of the Russian army, it may be inferred 
that this fruitless effort of imperial pride must have worked a 
deep cavity in the military strength of the Czar. 

Moreover, Omar Pasha took another, and a not less skillful 
advantage of the political considerations which prevented the 
Russians from passing the Danube; for, during the winter, he 
fleshed his troops by indulging them with enterprises against 
the enemy’s posts along the whole: line of the Lower Danube 
from Widdin to Rassova; and since these attacks were often 
attended with success, and could never be signally repressed . 
by an enemy who had precluded himself from the right of 
crossing the river, they gave the Turks that sense of strength 
in fight which is at the root of warlike prowess. 

Karly in the winter the Emperor Nicholas came to under- 
Embarrass- stand the fault which he had committed in pre- 
ment and dis- scribing the Danube as a boundary—a boundary 
Czar, to be observed by himself, without the least right 
for expecting that it would be observed by his adversary. So 
now he would do the contrary of what he had done. Because 
he had committed a military fault in forbidding himself from 
all enterprises against the slowly-assembling forces of the Porte 
in 1853, he would now in 1854 undertake an invasion which 
must bring him into conflict with the gathered strength of the 
Ottoman Empire; and that, too, when it had become certain 
that the armed support of France and England would not be 
wanting to the Sultan. But perhaps, after all, it was hardly 
tolerable for a haughty monarch to have to stand passive, un- 
der the insulting coercion which was now to be applied to him 
by the Western Powers; and the Czar having no means of 


1 28th Stat ey E 1853. The declaration of war became absolute on the 
23rd. 


Cuap. XXI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. + 25S 


hostile action against the territories or the ships of either 
France or England, could only strike at his greater foes by 
striking at the ally whom they had undertaken to befriend. 
Upon the whole, therefore, he could not so school himself as 
to be able to abstain from attempting an invasion of Turkey ; 
but the wholesome trials which he had now undergone had so 
far disciplined his spirit that at length, after bitter anguish, he 
felt and acknowledged to himself the want of a firm adviser. 

Russia owned a great General who had never sanctioned by 
He resorts for HIS counsel the errors of the previous year; and 
aid to Paskiee now—baftled—agitated—driven hither and thither 
ecg _by alternating impulses till his brain had become a 
guide more blind than chance—the Czar abated his personal 
claims to the conduct of a war, and came for help and counsel 
to the veteran Paskievitch. The evil was almost beyond the 
old man’s hope of cure; for how could Russia march upon 
Constantinople—nay, how, in strict prudence, could she march 
upon the Balkan whilst England and France were in full com- 
mand of the Euxine? But was the Czar then simply power- 
less against Turkey? Had his million of soldiers been torn 
from their homes in vain? Had he not busied himself all his 
days in organizing armies, and reviewing drilled men, and 
grinding down his people into the mere fractional components 
of an army, until the very faces of soldiers in the same battal- 
ion were brought to be similar and uniform ?—had his life 
been utter foolishness, and was the labor of his reign so barren 
that he could not now make a campaign against the simple 
Turks, who never took pains about any thing until the hour 
of battle? Had he not spoken in the councils of Europe as 
though he were a potentate so great that the Empire of the. 
Ottomans existed by force of his magnanimity ? And now— 
had it come to this—that at the mere bidding of the Western 
Powers, and without their firing a shot, he was to stand ar- 
rested in the presence of scoffing: Europe like a prisonef* who 
had delivered his sword ? 

Well, Paskievitch, in a painful, soldierly way, could tell him 
Paskievitch's What would be the least imprudent plan for attack- 
pope ing the inner dominions of the Sultan. The prin- 
ciples of the art of war have a great stability; and although 
there is an infinite variety in the methods of applying then, it 
results, that the invasion of one nation by another is repeated- 
ly undertaken upon the same accustomed route. 

By the route which Paskievitch recommended, the invader 
crossed the Danube in the neighborhood of its great bend to- 
ward the north; makes himself master of Silistria; encounters 


256 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXIL 


and overcomes the assembled strength of the Ottoman Em- 
pire in front of the great intrenched camp of Shoumla; then 
advancing, forces the difficult passes of the Balkan as best he 
mav; marches upon Adrianople; and thence on—thence on if 
he can and dares—to the shore of the Bosphorus. Erivanski! 
could hardly have believed that his master’s military power 
was equal to so great an undertaking as that; but if it sue- 
ceeded only in some of its early stages, diplomacy might come 
to the rescue of the Czar, as it had done in 1829; and the 
plan had this in its favor—that it placed a broad tract of. 
country between Austria and the right flank of the invading 
army; and another, though less extended, territory between 
its left flank and the fleets of the Western Powers. | 

But, in the counsels of a wise and faithful soldier there is a 
pitiless candor—a dreadful precision. He comes in his hard 
way to weights, and to numbers, and to measurements of space 
and of time. Without mercy to the vanity. of his suffering 
master, Paskievitch defaced the cherished form of the ‘ mate- 
‘rial guarantee’ by insisting that the Czar should cease from 
trying to hold the Principalities entire, and that all his forces 
should be quickly withdrawn from the Lesser Wallachia. 
This done, he promised the Czar an invasion of the Ottoman 
Empire; but the carrying of the enterprise beyond the valley 
of the Danube was to be only upon condition that Silistria 
should fall, and should fall before the Ist of May.? 

So now, the streams of battalions rumored to be setting in 
Movement of upon the Lower Danube, from the confines of All 
troops in the the Russias, woke up the mind of Europe, and por- 


Russian em- . : 
pire. tended a great invasion. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


Ir has been seen that without treaty, and without the advice 
sir John Bur. OT knowledge of Parliament—nay, even, perhaps, 
goyne and Col- without a distinct conception of what it was doing 
dispatched to —the English Government had been gradually con- 


the Levant. tracting engagements which were almost equiva- 


1 This was Paskievitch’s title. It denoted that he was the conqueror of 
Erivan, a prevince conquered from the Persians. 

2 My knowledge of the counsels tendered to the Emperor by Paskievitch 
is derived from papers in the possession of the late Lord Raglan. 


Cuap. XXII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 257 


lent to adefensive alliance with the Sultan. France, by vir- 
tue of her new understanding with England, had come under 
the same obligations; and now that an invasion of the Otto- 
man Empire was threatened, it became necessary that the 
Western Powers should take measures for its defense. At 
first, however, their views were limited to the defense of the 
Sultan’s home territories, and especially those which gave the 
control of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Two Engineer 
ofticers—Colonel Ardent on the part of France, and Sir John 
Burgoyne on the part of England—were dispatched to Tur- 
key, with instructions to report upon the best means of aiding 
the Sultan to defend his home dominions; and, almost at the 
same time, it was agreed between the two Western Powers, 
that each of them should prepare to send a small body of 
troops into the Levant. 

The English force was collected at Malta. Ofthe Ministers 
Troops sentto Who joined in adopting this measure, some foresaw 
Mele that the few battalions which they were dispatch- 
ing to the East were the nucleus ofan army which might have 
to operate in the field; but others looked upon them as a force 
Tendency of intended to support our negotiations. This ambi- 
thismeasure. onity of motive was a root of evil; for the collat- 
eral arrangements which are requisite for enabling an army to 
live, to move, and to fight, bear a vast proportion to the mere 
business of collecting the men; and there is always a danger 
that a body of troops, sent toward the scene of action with a 
diplomatic intent, will be unsupported by the measures which 
are requisite for actual war, and yet, upon the rupture of the 
negotiations, will be prematurely hurried into the field. On 
the other hand, the councilors of a great military State are so 
well accustomed to know the cost and the labor which must 
precede the advance of an army, that the mere protrusion of a 
body of well-equipped troops, unsupported by the collateral 
appliances of war, does not tell upon their minds as a proof of 
an intention to act. By dispatching a few battalions to Malta, 
without instructing Commissaries to go to the Levant and be- 
gin buying up the agricultural wealth of the country, we not 
only subjected our troops to the danger of their being brought 
into the field before supplies were ready, but also convinced 
the Russians that we could not be sincerely intending to en- 
Ministersde. gage in a war. Moreover, the slenderness of the 
termine to pro- addition which the Government proposed to make 
pose but a 
smallinerease tO our army tended to prolong the Czar’s fond con- 
ofthearmy. fidence in the weight and strength of the English 
Peace party ; and perhaps_this dangerous error was strength- 


258 -TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap, XXII, 


ened if Baron Brunnow was able to tell him that in proposing 
to the Cabinet a material increase of our land forces the Duke 
of Newcastle stood almost alone. 

The Prime Minister’s continued persistency in the use of 
Continuance of hurtful language was another of the causes which 
hewrsimpru. still helped to keep the Czar blindfold. Lord Aber- 
dent language. deen abhorred the bare thought of war; and he 
would not have suffered his country to be overtaken by it, if 
the coming danger had been of such a kind that it could be 
warded off by hating it and shunning its aspect. But it is not 
by intemperate hatred of war, nor yet by shunning its aspect, 
that war is averted. Almost to the last, Lord Aberdeen mis- 
guided himself. His loathing of war took such a shape, that 
he could not and would not believe in it; and when at last the 
spectre was close upon him, he covered his eyes and refused 
tosee. Basing himself upon the thoughtless saying of a states- 
man, who had laid it down that there could be no war in Eu- 
rope when France and England were agreed, he seems to have 
imagined that although he was suffering himself to be drawn 
on and on into measures which were always becoming less and 
less short of war, still he could maintain peace by taking care 
to be always along with the French Emperor; and he so clung 
to the paradise created by a false maxim, that he could not be 
torn from it. He would not be roused from a dream which 
was sweeter than all waking thoughts; and even now, to any 
man to. whom he chanced to speak, he continued to say that 
there could not, there would not be war. Coming from a Prime 
Minister, such words as these did not fail to have a noxious 
weight with many who heard them. Baron Brunnow, we have 
seen, had looked deeper even at a much earlier period, and now 
again no doubt he took care to warn his master that Lord 
Aberdeen was under a passionate hatred of war which deprived 
him of his competence to speak in the name of his country; 
but by other channels the words of our Prime Minister were 
carried to the Emperor of Russia, and, being very welcome to 
him, and coinciding with his long cherished notions, they tend- 
ed to keep him in the perilous belief that Lord Aberdeen was 
speaking with knowledge, and that England, still clogged by 
her Peace Party, was unable to go to war. . 


Cuap. XXIII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 259. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


A NEW opportunity of making his way back to peace was 
The French 20W thrown away by the Czar. The exigencies of 
Emperor's let- a throne based upon the deeds of the 2nd of De- 
ter to the Czar, ‘is 

eember were always driving the French Emperor 
to endeavor to allay the remembrance of the past by creating 
a stir in Kurope and endeavoring to win celebrity. When Eu- 
vope was quiet, he was obliged for his life’s sake to become its 
-dlisturber; but when it was at war or threatened with war, he 
was willing, it seems, to take an exactly opposite method of 
attaining the required conspicuousness, for he was not a blood- 
thirsty nor even a very active-minded man; and there seems 
no good reason to doubt that, having brought Europe to the 
state in which it was at the close of January, he was sincere 
in the pacific step which he then took. At a moment when 
war was already kindled and seemed to be on the point of in- 
volving the great Powers, the odd vanity and the theatric bent 
which had so strangely governed his life, might easily make 
him wish to come upon the scene and bestow the blessing of 
peace upon the grateful, astonished nations. On the other 
hand, an English Minister would be careless of this kind of 
celebrity, and, so that peace could be restored to Europe, 
would be well pleased that the honor of the achievement 
should seem to belong to the French Emperor. ; 

There is no reason to doubt that the English Government 
assented to the somewhat startling plan under which the 
French Emperor conceived himself entitled to speak for the 
Queen of England as well as for himself, and certainly the li- 
cense, however strange it may appear, was in strict consist- 
ency with the spirit of the understanding which seems to have 
been established between the two Western Powers.! . 

On the 29th of January the French Emperor addressed an 
autograph letter to his ‘ good friend’ of All the Russjas. The 
letter in many parts of it was ably worded and moderate in its 
tone, but it was mainly remarkable for the language in which 
the French Emperor took upon himself to speak, and even to 
threaten war in the name of the Queen of England. After 


? See the inferred purport of this understanding as stated ante, p. 216. 


260 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuar. XXII 


suggesting a scheme of pacification, he said to the Czar: ‘ Let 
‘your Majesty adopt this plan, upon which the Queen of En- 
‘gland and myself are perfectly agreed, and tranquillity will be 
‘re-established and the world satisfied. There is nothing in 
‘the plan which is unworthy of your Majesty—nothing which 
‘can wound your honor; but if, from a motive difficult to un- 
‘derstand, your Majesty should refuse this proposal, then 
‘France as well as England will be compelled to leave to the 
‘fate of arms and the chances of war that which might now be 
‘decided by reason and justice.! The French Emperor per- 
mitted himself to write this at a time when, so far as is known, 
no threat like that which he chose to utter in the name of the 
Queen had been addressed by the English Cabinet to’ the 
Court of St. Petersburg. , 

With the feelings which might be expected from them, En- 
glish Ministers of State have generally been slow to use threat- 
ening words, and they have been chary, too, in putting for- 
ward the name of their Sovereign. Our Government could 
not have been willing that England should be thrust upon the 
attention of the world in a way which the too fastidious Court 
of St. Petersburg would be sure to regard as grotesque. No 
one can doubt the pain with which the members of Lord 
Aberdeen’s Cabinet must have seen the French Emperor come 
forward upon the stage of Europe, and publicly menace the 
Emperor of Russia in the name of their Queen. The process 
by which they were brought to suffer this is unknown to me. 
What seems probable is that a draft of the letter was submit- 
ted to them, accompanied with significant representations of 
the importance which the French Emperor attached to it, and 
that the Cabinet yielded to the pressure because it feared that 
resistance might chill the new alliance, and might. even per- 
haps cause it to be suddenly abandoned for an alliance between 
Russia and France. 

The letter proposed an armistice in order to leave open a 
free course for negotiation. It would seem that in a military 
point of view, an armistice for a limited period, commencing in 
the early days of February, could not have been inconvenient 
to a Sovereign whose main difficulty at that time lay in the 
immensegmarches which he had to effect within his own do- 
minions ; and, on the other hand, to any one acquainted with 
the French Emperor’s personal weakness, it was obvious that, 
by a little harmless play upon his vanity, Russia might hope to 
obtain a great diplomatic advantage, and to effect a decorous 


1 * Annual Register,’ 1854. 


Cuapr. XXIII. | BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 261 


escape from her troubles. But the Czar was not politic, and, 
instead of seizing the proffered occasion, he not only rejected 
the overture, but aggravated his refusal by an unwise allusion 
to the French disasters of 1812. 

In his quest after this sort of fame the French Emperor was 
Mission to st, NOt without rivals. We have'seen the share which 
Petersburg the English Peace Party had had in misleading the 
rom the En- . . : 
glish Peace | mperor of Russia, and tempting him to become a 
uika disturber by withdrawing the wholesome fear which 
deters a man from venturing upon outrage. Certain brethren 
of the Society of Friends, who had been prominent members 
of this Party, now thought it becoming or wise to proceed to 
St. Petersburg and request the Emperor of All the Russias to 
concur with them in preserving Europe from the calamity of 
war. 

A little later, and the Czar would have stamped in fury and 
driven from his sight any hapless aid-de-camp who had come 
to him with a story about a deputation from the English Peace 
Party, for the hour was at hand when his curses were about 
to fall heavy on the men who had led him on into all his troub- 
les by pretending that England was immersed in trade and re- 
solved to engage in no war.! But at this time his hope of 
seeing our Government held back by the Peace Party had not 
altogether vanished, and he resolved to give this strange mis- 
sion a genial welcome. 

Of course the political conversation between the booted Czar 
and the men of peace was sheer nothingness; but what fol- 
lowed shows the care with which Nicholas had studied the 
middle classes of England. When he thought that the first 
scene of the interlude had lasted long enough, he suddenly said 
to his prim visitors, ‘ By-the-by, do you know my wife?’ They 
. said they did not. The Czar presented them to the Empress. 
She charmed them with her kindly grace. They came away 
sorrowing to think that their wrong-headed countrymen in 
England should be seeking a quarrel with so good and well- 
meaning a man as friend Nicholas Romanoff, but perhaps what 
more than all else laid hold of their hearts was the thought 
that the Czar called his Empress so naturally by her dear home- 
ly title of wife. 5 


? 


1 The scene of violence here prospectively alluded to will be mentioned 
hereafter,. It occurred in the autumn. 


262 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XXIV: 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


WELCOME or unwelcome, the truth must be told. A huge 
Temper of the Obstacle to the maintenance of peace in Europe 
English an ob- was raised up by the temper of the English people. 
maintenance In public, men still used forms of expression imply- 
ef gece. ing that they would be content for England to lead 
a quiet life among the nations, and they still classed expecta- 
tions of peace amongst their hopes, and declared in joyous tones 
that the prospects of war were gloomy and painful; but these 
phrases were the time-honored canticles of a doctrine already 
discarded, and they who used them did not mean to deceive 
their neighbors, and did not deceive themselves. The English 
Their desire desired war; and perhaps it ought to be acknowl- 
for war. edged that there were many to whom war, for the 
sake of war, was no longer a hateful thought. Either the peo- 
ple had changed, or else there was hollowness in some of the 
professions which orators had made in their name. 

When by lapse of years the glory of the great war against 
Causes of the France had begun to fade from the daily thoughts 
akan of the people, they inclined to look more narrowly 
their feeling. than before into the origin of taxes, and were .not 
unwilling to hear that their burdens were the result of wars 
which might have been easily avoided. Moreover it chanced 
that from after Marlborough’s time downward, or at all events 
from after the period of Chatham’s ascendency, the wars in 
which England found herself engaged had been originated and . 
conducted for the most part under the auspices of the Tory 
party, and it followed naturally that the Whig or Liberal party, 
being in antagonism to the party which had long kept the 
country under arms, should charge itself with the duty of ex- 
pressing a just hatred of all wars which are needless or unjust. 
If speakers in the performance of this duty often used extray- 
agant or fanatical language, they did not perhaps mean to in- 
culcate much doctrine, but rather to display the vehemence of 
their hostility to the opposite faction. The applause which 
greeted these denunciations had the same meaning. On the 
other hand, the Tories declared that they did not yield to their 
adversaries in hatred of all needless wars; and thus for near 
forty years there was a chorus and an anti-chorus engaged in 


Cuar. XXIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 263 


a continual chant, and denouncing wars in the abstract at times 
when no war seemed impending. ‘To men skimming the sur- 
face of English politics it was made to appear that the people 
had a rooted love of peace. 

These signs of a peaceful determination had increased in 
abundance after the great constitutional change which obliged 
the ruling classes to share their power with the people at large ; 
and thence it was inferred that the desire of England to remain 
at peace was not the mere whim of any administration or of 
any political party, but was based upon the solemn determina- 
tion of the whole people; and it has been seen that the Empe- 
ror Nicholas had deliberately founded his policy upon this be- 
lief. A deeper knowledge might have taught him that a fiery 
generous people is more quick to plunge into war than a cold, 
worldly, politic oligarchy, and that even if the policy of En- 
gland were as much under the control of the masses of the peo- 
ple as he believed it to be, there would be all the more likeli- 
hood of her being prone to take up arms, because in states 
which are much under the governance of the democratic prin- 
ciple a proposal to make war against the foreigner is often 
resorted to by one of the contending factions as a stratagem 
for baffling the others. But these truths lay below, and what 
_ appeared upon the surface of English politics was a sincere de- 
votion to the cause of peace. Over and over again it was laid 
down with the seeming concurrence of unanimous thousands, 
that war, if it were not for mere defense, was not only foolish, 
but was also in a high degree wicked. 

But the English can hardly ever be governed by a dogma; 
for although they are by nature wise in action, yet, being vehe- 
ment and careless in their way of applauding loud words, they 
encourage their orators and those also who address them in 
writing to be strenuous rather than wise; and the result is that 
these teachers, trying always to be more and more forcible, 
grow blind to logical dangers, and leap with headlong joy into 
the pit which reasoners call the Absurdum. Then, and not 
without joyous laughter, reaction begins. 

All England had been brought to the opinion that it was a 
wickedness to incur war without necessity or justice; but 
when the leading spirits of the Peace Party had the happiness 
of beholding this wholesome result, they were far from stop- 
ping short. They went on to make light of the very principles 
by which peace is best maintained; and although they were 
conscientious men, meaning to say and do what was right, yet, 
being unacquainted with the causes which bring about the fall 
of empires, they deliberately inculeated that habit of setting 


264 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXIV. 


comfort against honor, which historians call ‘corruption.’ They 
made it plain, as they imagined, that no war which was not 
engaged in for the actual defense of the country could ever be 
right ; but even there they took no rest, for they went on and 
on, and still on, until their foremost thinker reached the con- 
clusion that, in the event of an attack upon our shores, the in- 
vaders ought to be received with such an effusion of hospital- 
ity and brotherly love as could not fail to disarm them of their 
enmity, and convert the once dangerous Zouave into the valued 
friend of the family.!. Then, with great merriment, the whole 
English people turned round, and, although they might still be 
willing to go to the brink of other precipices, they refused to 
go farther toward that one. The doctrine had struck no root. 
It was ill suited to the race to whom it was addressed. The 
male cheered it, and forgot it until there came a time for test- 
ing it, and then discarded ‘it; and the woman, from the very 
first, with ler true and simple instinct, was quick to understand 
its value. She would subscr ibe, if her husband required it, to 
have the doctrine taught to charity children, but she would not 
suffer it to be taught to her own boy. So it proved barren. 
In truth, the English knew that they were a great and a free 
people, because their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers, and all 
the great ancestry of whom they come, had been men of war- 
like quality; and deeming it time to gainsay the teaching of 
the Peace Party, but not being skilled in dialectics and the use 
of words, they unconsciously came to think that it would be 
well to express a practical opinion of the doctrine by taking 
State offecling the first honest and fair opportunity of engaging in 
in the Spring war. Still, the conscience of the nation was sound, 
a ea and men were as well convinced as ever of the wick- 
edness of a war wrongly or wantonly incurred. They were in 
this mind: they would not go to war without believing that 
they had a good and a just cause, but it was certain that tid- 
ings importing the necessity of going to war for duty’s sake 
would be received with a welcome in England. 

Therefore, when the people gradually came to hear of the 
Effect of the fierce oppression attempted by Prince Mentscehi- 
pe imes Sig koff, and the wise, firm, moderate resistance of the 
pablic mind. ‘Turks, they believed that there might be coming in 


' 1} Thave no copy of this curious pamphlet before me, but it has been quoted 
(1 believe by Lord Palmerston) in the House of Commons, and therefore the 
passage alluded to in the text might no doubt be found in Hansard. The 
writer, I remember, went. farther than is above stated. He argued that the 
French people would be so shamed by the.kindness shown to their troops that 
they would never rest until they had paid us a large pecuniary indemnity for 
any losses or inconvenience which the invasion may have caused. 


Cuar. XXIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 265 


sight once more that very thing for which they longed in their 
hearts—namely, a just cause of war. And when at length the 
seemingly unequal conflict began, the bravery of the Turks on 
the Danube and the skill of their General quickly roused that 
sympathy which England hardly ever refuses to a valiant com- 
batant who is weaker than his foe; but when they came to 
know of the catastrophe of Sinope, and to hear of it as a slaugh- 
ter treacherously and stealthily committed upon their old ally 
by an enemy who had engaged to observe neutrality in the 
_Euxine,! they were inflamed with a desire to execute justice, 
and nothing was now wanting to fill the measure of their right- 
eous anger except a disclosure of the Czar’s cold scheme for 
the spoliation of the ‘ sick man’s’ house. 

But after all, and especially in questions of foreign policy, 
Still, in foreign the bulk ofa nation must lean for guidance upon 
affairs, the na public men; and unless it appear that there were 
guidance to Statesmen deserving the ear of the country who 
publiemen. —_ faithfully tried to make a stand against error and 
failed for want of public support, it is unfair to charge the fault . 
upon the people. 

There were two Statesmen high in office, and high in the 
confidence of the nation, who, more than most other men, were 
known to be attached to the cause of peace. To them every 
man looked who desired that his country should not be drawn 
into war without stringent need. 

The impression produced upon the Court of St. Petersburg 
by the heedless language of our Prime Minister has been al- 
ready described; but the effect which he wrought upon the 
public mind of England by remaining at the head of the Govern- 
Lord Aber. Mentis stillto be shown. Lord Aberdeen’s hatred 
Goat, of war was so honestly and piously entertained, and 
was, at the same time, so excessive and self-defeating, that in 
one point of view it had the character of a virtue, and in an- 
other it was more like disease. His feelings, no less than his 
opinions, turned him against all war; but against a war with 
Russia he was biased by the impressions of his early life, by 
the relation of mutual esteem which had long existed between 
the Emperor Nicholas and himself; and perhaps by a dim fore- 
sight of the perils which might be brought upon Europe by a 
forcible breaking up of the ties established by the Congress 
of Vienna and riveted by the Peace of Paris. In an early 
stage of the dispute, he resolved that he would not remain 
at the head of the Government unless he could maintain peace ; 


' The erroneousness of this impression has been already shown. See ante. 


Wow. b— VM 


266 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuav, XXIV: 


and he anxiously sought to choose a moment for making his 
stand against the farther progress toward war. Far from 
wishing to prolong his hold of power, he was always laboring 
to make out when, and on what ground, he could lay down the 
burden which oppressed him. Every day he passed his sure 
hour and a half in the Foreign Office, and came away more and 
more anxious perhaps, but without growing more clear-sight- 
ed. If he could ever have found the point where the road to 
peace diverged from the road to war, he would instantly have 
declared for peace; and, failing to carry the Government with 
him, would have joyfully resigned office, and for his deliverance 
would have offered up thanksgiving to Heaven. But his in- 
tellect, though not without high quality in it, was deficient in 
clearness and force. In troubled times it did not yield him 
light enough to walk by, and it had not the propelling power 
which was needed for pushing him into opportune action. In 
politics, though not in matters of faith, he wanted the sacred 
impulse which his Kirk is accustomed to call ‘the word of 
‘quickening.’ Lord Clarendon’s polished dispatches so forced 
his approval, that he could never lay his hand upon one of 
them, and make it the subject of a ministerial crisis. Yet, day 
by day, without knowing it, the Prime Minister was assenting 
to a course of policy destined to end in a rupture. Lord Clar- 
endon’s pithy phrase was less applicable to the country at large 
than to the Prime Minister. It was strictly true that Lord 
Aberdeen drifted. He steadfastly faced toward peace, and 
was always being carried toward war. He remained at the 
head of the Government; and, the papers being withheld from 
Parliament, the country was led to imagine that all which it 
was possible to do or suffer for the sake of peace would be 
done and suffered by a Cabinet of which Lord Aberdeen was 
the chief. 7 

But there was another member of the Cabinet who was 
supposed to hold war in deep abhorrence. Mr. 
Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, 
since he was by virtue of his office the appointed guardian of 
the public purse, those pure and lofty principles which made 
him cling to peace were re-enforced by an official sense of the 
harm which war inflicts by its costliness. Now it happened 
that, if he was famous for the splendor of his eloquence, for his 
unaffected piety, and for his blameless life, he was celebrated 
far and wide for a more than common liveliness of conscience. 
He had once imagined it to be his duty to quit a Government, 
and to burst through strong ties of friendship and gratitude, 
by reason of a thin shade of difference on the subject of white 


Mr. Gladstone. 


Cuap. XXIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 267 


or brown sugar. It was believed that, if he were to commit 
even a little sin, or to imagine an evil thought, he would in- 
stantly arraign himself before the dread tribunal which await- 
ed him in his own bosom; and that, his intellect being subtle 
and microscopic, and delighting in casuistry and exaggeration, 
he would be likely to give his soul a very harsh trial, and treat 
himself as a great criminal for faults too minute to be visible 
to the naked eyes of laymen. His friends lived in dread of 
his virtues as tending to make him whimsical and unstable, 
and the practical politicians, conceiving that he was not to be 
depended upon for party purposes, and was bent upon none 
but lofty objects, used to look upon him as dangerous — used 
to call him behind his back a good man—a good man in the 
worst sense of the term. In 1858, 1t seemed only too proba- 
_ ble that he might quit office upon an infinitely slight suspicion 
of the warlike tendency of the Government; but what appear- 
ed certain was, that if, upon the vital question of peace or war, 
the Government should depart by even a hair’s breadth from 
the right path, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would instant- 
ly refuse to be a partaker of their fault. He, and he before all 
other men, stood charged to give the alarm of danger; and 
there seemed to be no particle of ground for fearing that, like 
the Prime Minister, he would drift. The known watchfulness 
and alacrity of his conscience, and his power of detecting small 
germs of evil, led the world to think it impossible that he could 
be moving for months together in a wrong course without 
knowing it. 

Now, from the beginning of the negotiations until the final 
Lord Aberdeen rupture, Lord Aberdeen continued to be the Prime 
and Mr. Glad- "Minister, and Mr. Gladstone the Chancellor of the 
ed in office.  Hxchequer. The result was that, during the ses- 
sion of 1853, and the autumn which followed it, the presence 
Effect ofthisin Of these two Ministers in the Cabinet was regarded 
paralyzing the as ‘a guarantee of the peaceful tendency of the Gov- 
efforts of those wer 
who wished to ernment; and when, after the catastrophe of Sinope, 
prevent a war. it became hardly possible to doubt that war was at 
hand, the continuing responsibility of these good men.seemed 
to dispense the most anxious lovers of peace from the duty of 
farther questioning; for if Lord Aberdeen continued to head 
the Ministry which was leading the country into war, people 
thought he must have attained the bitter certainty that war 
was needed; and, on the other hand, it was clear that Mr. 
Gladstone remaining in office, and taking it upon his conscience 
to prepare funds for the bloody strife, was giving to the pub- 
lic a sure guarantee that the enterprise in which he helped to 


268 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XXIV. 


engage the country was blameless at the very least, and even 
perhaps pure and holy. It was thus that the conscience of the 
people got quieted. It was a hard task to have to argue that 
peace could be honestly and wisely maintained when Lord 
Aberdeen was levying war. None but a bold man could say 
that the war was needless or wicked whilst Mr. Gladstone was 
feeding it with his own hand. 

It was thus that, by the course which Lord Aberdeen and 
Mr. Gladstone had been taking, the efforts of those who loved 
peace were paralyzed. No doubt a cold retrospect, carried on 
with the light of the past, may enable a political critic to fix 
upon more than one occasion when, holding the opinions which 
they did, these two Ministers might have resolved to make a 
stand for peace; and it is believed that long before his death 
Lord Aberdeen saw this and grieved; but if any man will 
honestly recall the state of his own feelings and opinions in the 
year 1853, he will find perhaps that he himself at the time was 
carried down by the flood of events; and, when he has sub- 
mitted to this self-discipline, he will be better able to under- 
stand that others, though honest and able, might easily lose 
their footing. At all events, the errors of Lord Aberdeen and 
Mr. Gladstone, if errors they were, were only errors of judg- 
ment. The scrupulous purity of their motives has never been 
brought into question. 

But, if these were the causes which inclined the bulk of the 
The rnin of H0glish people to desire or to assent to the war, 
their cause — they hardly yield reasons sufficing to show why the 
bea eat lesser number of men, who honestly thought that 
grounds to peace ought to be maintained, should suffer them- 
Stand upon. selves to be overpowered, without making stand 
enough to prove that they clung to their old faith, and that 
England, however warlike, was, at all events, not of one mind. 
The hottest defenders of the war policy could hardly refuse to 
acknowledge that there was much semblance of reason on the 
side of their adversaries. No one could say that the interest 
which England had in the perfect independence of the Otto- 
man Empire was so obvious and so deep as to exclude all 
questioning ; and, even if a man were driven from that first 
ground, still, without being guilty of paradox, he might fairly 
dispute and say that the independence of the Sultan was not 
really bronght into peril by a form of words which, during 
some weeks, had received the approval of every one of the 
five great Powers. 

But, if these views were only plausible, there was another 
which was sound.. It could be fairly maintained that the in- 


Cuap. XXIV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 269 


trusion of Russia into two provinces, lying far away on the 
southeastern frontiers of Austria, was no cause why England 
alone, nor why England and France together, should under- 
take to stand forward and perform, at their own charge and 
cost, a duty which attached upon Austria in the first place, 
and next upon Europe at large. 

Of course the actual and immediate success of any such 
Not for want Struggle for the maintenance of peace was griev- 
of oratorical ously embarrassed, in the way already shown, by 
ides the ‘course which had been taken by Lord Aber- 
deen and Mr. Gladstone; but it is not the custom of the En- 
glish to be utterly disheartened by political losses; and it hap- 
pened that outside the Government Offices the cause of peace 
was headed by two men who had been powerful in their time, 
and who retained the qualities of mind and body by which, 
in former years, they had gained a great sway. 

Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright were members of the House of 
Mr. Cobden COmmons. Both had the gift of a manly strenuous 
ooh eloquence, and their diction, being founded upon 

a English lore rather than upon shreds of weak Latin, 
went straight to the mind of their hearers.. Of these men the 
one could persuade, the other could attack; and, indeed, Mr. 
Bright’s oratory was singularly well qualified for preventing 
an erroneous acquiescence in the policy of the day ; for, besides 
that he was honest and fearless, besides that with a ringing 
voice he had all the clearness and force which resulted from 
his great natural gifts, as well as from his one-sided method of 
thinking, he had the advantage of being generally able to 
speak in a state of sincere anger. In former years, whilst 
- their minds were disciplined by the almost mathematical ex- 
actness of the reasonings on which they relied, and when they 
were acting in concert with the shrewd traders of the north 
who had a very plain object in view, these two orators. had 
shown with what a strength, with what a masterly skill, with 
what patience, with what a high courage they could carry a 
great scientific truth through the storms of politics. They 
had shown that they could arouse and govern the assenting 
thousands who listened to them with deli¢ht—that they could 
bend the House of Commons—that they could press their 
creed upon a Prime Minister, and put upon his mind so hard 
a stress that after a while he felt it to be a torture and a vio- 
lence to his reason to have to make stand against them. Nay, 
more. Each of these two gifted men had proved that he could 
go bravely into the midst of angry opponents, could show them 
their fallacies one by one, destroy their favorite theories be- 


270 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar, XXIV. 


fore their very faces, and triumphantly argue them down. 
Now these two men were honestly devoted to the cause of 
peace. They honestly believed that the impending war with 
Russia was a needless war. There was no stain upon their 

names. How came it that they sank and were able to make 
no good stand for the cause they loved so well? 

The answer is simple. 

Upon the question of peace or war (the very question upon 
Reasons why Which more than any other, a man might well de- 
fhey were able sire to make his counsels tell) these two gifted men 
stand. had forfeited their hold upon the ear of the coun- 
try. They had forfeited it by their former want of modera- 
tion. It was not by any intemperate words upon the question 
of this war with Russia that they had shut themselves out 
from the counsels of the nation; but in former years they had 
adopted and put forward in their strenuous way some of the 
more extravagant doctrines of the Peace Party. In times 
when no war was in question, they had run down the practice 
of war in terms so broad and indiscriminate that they were 
understood to commit themselves toa disapproval of all wars 
not strictly defensive, and to decline to treat as defensive those 
wars which, although not waged against an actual invader of 
the Queen’s dominions, might still be undertaken by England 
in the performance of a European duty, or for the purpose of 
checking the undue ascendency of another Power. Of course 
the knowledge that they held doctrines of this wide sort dis- 
qualified them from arguing with any effect against the war 
then pending. A man can not have weight as an opponent of 
any particular war if he is one who is known to be against al- 
most all war. It is vain for him to offer to be moderate for 
the nonce, and to propose to argue the question in a way 
which his hearers will recognize. In vain he declares that for 
the sake of argument he will lay aside his own broad princi- 
ples and mimic the reasoning of his hearers. . Practical men 
know that his mind is under the sway of an antecedent de- 
termination which dispenses him from the more narrow but 
more important inquiry in which they are engaged. They 
will not give ear to one who is striving to lay down the con- 
clusions which ought, as he says, to follow from other men’s 
principles. He who altogether abjures the juice of the grape 
can not usefully criticize the vintage of any particular year ; 
and a man who is the steady adversary of wars in general upon 
broad and paramount grounds, will never be regarded as a 
sound judge of the question whether any particular war is 
wicked or righteous, nor whether it is foolish or wise. 


Cuar. XXIV] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. ont 


It must be added that there was another cause which tended 
to disqualify Mr. Bright from taking an effective part in the 
maintenance of peace. For one who would undertake a task 
of that kind at a time when warlike ardor is prevailing in the 
country, it is above all things necessary that he should be a 
statesman so truly attached to what men mean when they talk 
of their country, and so jealous of its honor, that no man could 
ascribe his efforts in the cause of peace to motives which a 
warlike and high-spirited people would repudiate. Mr. Bright 
sincerely desired the welfare of the traders and workmen in 
the United Kingdom; and if he desired the welfare of the 
other classes with less intensity, it may fairly be believed that 
to all he wished to see justice done; so, if this worthy dispo- 
sition of mind were equivalent to what a man calls his “love 
of his country,” no one could fairly say that Mr. Bright was 
without the passion. But, in another, and certainly the old — 
and the usual sense, a man’s love “of his country” is understood 
to represent something more than common benevolence toward 
the persons living within it. For if he be the citizen of an an- 
cient State blessed with freedom, renowned in arms, and hold- 
ing wide sway in the world, his love of his country means some- 
thing of attachment to the institutions which have made her 
what she is, means something of pride in the long suffering, 
and the battle, and the strife which have shed glory upon his 
countrymen in his own time, and upon their fathers in the time 
before him. It means that he feels his country’s honor to be 
a main term and element of his own content. It means that 
he is bent, upon the upholding of her dominion, and is so tem- 
pered as to become the sudden enemy of any man who, even 
though he be not an invader, still attempts to hack at her 
power. Now in this, the heathen but accustomed sense of the 
phrase, Mr. Bright would be the last to say that he was a lover 
of his country. He would rather, perhaps, acknowledge that, 
taking ‘his country’ in that sense, he hated it. Yet at a time 
when the spirit of the nation was up, no man could usefully 
strive to moderate or guide it unless his patriotism were be- 
lieved to be exactly of that heathen sort which Mr. Bright dis- 
approved. Thus by the nature of his patriotism, no less than 
by the immoderate width of his views on the lawfulness of 
wars, this powerful orator was so disabled as to be hindered 
from applying his strength toward the maintenance of peace. 

The country was impassioned, but it was not so mad as to 
be deaf to precious counsels; and a statesman who had shown 
by his past life that he loved his country in the ancient way, 
and that he knew how to contemplate the eventuality of war 


249 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXV. 


with a calm and equal mind, might have won attention for _ 
views which questioned the necessity of the war then threat- 
ened; and if in good time he had brought to bear upon his 
opinions a sufficing power and knowledge, he might have al- 
tered the policy of his country.!. But outside the Cabinet the 
real tenor of the negotiations of 1853 was still unknown, and, 
Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone consenting to remain mem- 
bers of a war-going Government, and Mr. Cobden and Mr. 
Bright being disqualified for useful debate by the nature of 
their opinions, no stand could be made. 

By these steps, then, the English people passed from a seem- 
ing approval of the doctrines of the Peace Party to a state of 
warlike ardor; and it was plain that, if the Queen should send 
down to the Houses of Parliament a message importing war, 
the Royal appeal would be joyfully answered by an almost 
unanimous people. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


Wuen the English Parliament assembled on the 31st of 
Meeting of Par- January, there was still going on in Europe a sem- 
er blance of negotiation; but amongst men accustomed 
to the aspect of public affairs, there was hardly more than one 
who failed to see that France and England had gone too far to 
be able to recede, and that by the very weight of their power 
and its inherent duties, they were now at last drawn into war. 
The Queen's ‘This condition of things was fairly enough disclosed 
Speech. by the Queen’s Speech, and Parliament was asked. 
to provide for an increase of the military and naval forces with 
a view to give weight to the negotiations still pending. But 
the English Government was not suffered to forget its bond 
with the French Emperor, and the Prime Minister, whilst still 
indulging a hope of peace, consented to record and continue 
the error which had brought him to the verge of war. It 


_* This was in print before that curious and interesting confirmation of my 
statement—my statement of the relations between the Peace Party and their 
country—which Mr. Cobden has since given to the world. Mr. Cobden has 
said that at the time of the war, neither he nor Mr. Bright could win any at- 
tention to their views, and he added that he (Mr. Cobden) will never again 
try to withstand a warlike ardor once kindled, because, when a people are in- 
flamed in that way, they are no better than ‘mad dogs.’— Speech in the autumn 
of 1862. He sees no defect in the principles of a Peace Party which is to sus- 
pend its operations in times of warlike excitement. 


Cuap. XXV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 278 


seems that for good reasons it was of some moment to the 
French Emperor to be signally named in the Queen’s Speech, 
and Lord Aberdeen again submitted to a form of words which 
carefully distinguished the posture of France and England from 
that of the four Powers. The Queen was advised to say: ‘I 
‘have continued to act in cordial co-operation with the Em- 
‘peror of the French, and my endeavors in conjunction with 
‘my Allies to preserve and to restore peace between the con- 
‘tending parties, although hitherto unsuccessful, have been un- 
‘remitting.’ 

Like the similar paragraph which had marked the Royal 
The policy * >peech at the close of the preceding session, this 
which it indi- phrase, strange as it was, gave a true though some- 
arts what dim glimpse of the policy which was leading 
England astray. In principle, she was marching along with 
The separate all the rest of the four Powers; and yet, all the 
understanding : 5 : : 
with France While, she’ was engaged with the French Emperor 
Aeyidifferenee, 1. & Separate course of action. If the aims of Aus- 
of opinion be- tria and Prussia had been seriously at variance with 
er the Gan. those of the Western Powers, this difference might 
man Powers. have been a good reason for separate action on the 
part of France and England. But the contrary was true. So 
Unswerving eep was the interest of Austria in the cause, and 
resolve of Aus- so closely were her views approved by Prussia, 
tria (and Prus- 
sia supports that, although for several months France and En- 
her) to rid the gland had been pressing forward in a way which 

palities . 

of Russian seemed to endanger the coherence of the quadruple 
SEQOPEs union, still even this dangerous course had hitherto 
failed to destroy the unanimity of the four Powers. If the 
French Emperor sought to use his alliance with England as a 
means of strengthening his hold over France, and if England 
was beginning to love the thought of war for wav’s sake, Aus- 
tria, from’ motives of a higher and more cogent sort (for she 
saw her interests vitally touched, and her safety threatened) 
was eager and determined to take such steps as might be 
needed for delivering the Principalities. Prussia agreed with 
her. It was nothing but the impatience and forwardness of 
France and England which relieved Austria from the necessi- 
ty of taking the lead; for the wrong which had to be redress- 
ed was one from which she, of all the great Powers, was the 
most a sufferer, and she had the concurrence of Prussia, not 
only in regard to the existing state of things, but even as to 
the ulterior objects of the war which her resolve might bring 
upon Germany. 

The proofs of all this abound. By the repeated words of 

M 2 


274 TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuap. XXV. 
Proofs of this. PCSponsible statesmen, by dispatches, by collective 
drawn from notes, by protocols, by solemn treaty of offensive - 
set icthe 2ud detensive alliance against Russia, by peremp- 
Rnesnts tory summons addressed to the Czar, and, finally 
Speech. heii ec 

(so far as concerns Austria), by the application of 
force, the German Powers disclosed and executed their poli- 
cy ; and the policy which they disclosed and executed was the 
same policy as had been avowed by the Western Powers. It 
has been seen that in that early period of the troubles, when 
the Czar was but beginning to cross the Pruth, Austria took 
upon herself to endeavor to form a league for forcing the Czar 
to relinquish the Principalities ; and, from that hour down to 
the time when Nicholas gave way and re-entered his own do- 
minions, her efforts to bring about this end were unceasing 
and restless. 

Of the spirit in which Austria was acting through all the 
early stages of the negotiations, many a proof has been already 
given. With time, her impatience of the Czar’s intrusion upon 
her southern frontier increased and increased. It is true that 
she did not desire war. She anxiously wished to avoid it. 
She wished, if it were possible, to achieve the end withont war, 
but to achieve it she was resolved; and, if a vestige of the me- 
diating character which had belonged to her in the summer 
of 1853, or her legitimate anxiety to spare the Czar’s personal 
feelings, was a motive which tended to soften her language, it 
did not deflect her policy. Count Buol declared that, although 
in treating with Russia, ‘more management of terms’! was re- 
quired from Austria than from the Western Powers, the ob- 
jects sought by all the four Powers were the same, and that 
they ought to be compassed by ‘a general concordance in the 
‘way of putting them forward.’? But even the notion of us- 
ing a gentler form of expression than the one employed by 
the Western Powers was quickly abandoned, and Austria 
found no difficulty in adopting the exact words of the col- 
lective Note framed by Lord Clarendon in concert with the 
- French Government. So anxious was Austria to remain on 
the same ground with the rest of the four Powers, that she 
came into every term of the firm and wise scheme of action 
laid down by Lord Clarendon on the 16th of November,?® and 
‘bitterly offended the Czar by agreeing, at Lord Clarendon’s 
instance, that the Porte should not be even asked to accept 
any condition which it had already rejected, and by affirming 
the determination of the four Powers to intervene in any set- 
tlement of the dispute between Russia and Turkey. 


! «astern Papers,’ part vii., p.231. ° Ibid.,p.278. ° Ibid., pp. 238, 258. 


Cuar.XXV.] + BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 275 


Prussia also gave her unreserved adhesion to the plan of 
action laid down by Lord Clarendon, and to the measures re- 
sulting from it.1. By the Protocol of the 5th of December, 
1853,? both Austria and Prussia joined with the Western Pow- 
ers in declaring that the existence of Turkey in the limits as- 
signed to it by existing treaties was one of the necessary con- 
ditions of the European equilibrium. 

By the Protocol of the 13th of January, the four Powers re- 
corded their approval of the terms agreed to by the Turkish 
Government, and resolved to subinit them to the Court of St. 
Petersburg. At the very time when the English Government 
were framing the Speech from the throne, which ostentatious- 
ly separated France and England from the rest of the four 
Powers, the two great Courts of Germany were sending back 
Count Orloff and Baron Budberg to St. Petersburg, not only 
with a refusal on their part to give any engagement to stand 
neutral, but with a plain avowal that they intended to remain 
faithful to the principles which the four Powers had adopted 
in concert. Prussia told Baron Budberg that she should have 
to devise means without Russia for maintaining the equilibri- 
um of Europe. In significant words, the Emperor Francis Jo- 
seph told Count Orloff that he should have to be guided by 
the interests and the dignity of his Empire. 

It is said that by the tidings which forced him to know that 
he was alienated from the Austrian Emperor the Czar was 
wounded deep. He had conceived a strong affection for Fran- 
cis Joseph, and wherever he went he carried with him a small 
statuette which recalled to-his mind the features of the youth- 
ful Kaiser.. It would seem that his affection was of the kind 
which a loving and yet stern father bears his son, for it was 
joined with a sense of right to exact a great deference to his 
will. Nicholas had been strangely slow to believe that Fran- 
cis Joseph could harbor the thought of opposing him in arms, 
and when at last the truth was forced upon him, he desired 
that the marble should be taken from his sight. But he did 
not, they say, speak in anger. When he had spoken, he cover- 
ed his face with his hands and was wrung with grief. 

What we are showing just now is the complete union of 
opinion which was existing between England and the two 
great Courts of Germany on the 31st of January, 1854, and in 
order to thisewe have already referred to a variety of diplomat- 
ic transactions coming down to the time in question; but the 
policy of the courts of Vienna and Berlin at the close of the 


? «Kastern Papers,’ part ii., p, 263. ? Thid., p. 296. 


276 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [CHapr. XXV. 


month of January is to be inferred of course from the transac- 
tions which followed this date, as weil as from those which 
preceded it; and therefore it will be convenient to go forward 
a little in advance of the general progress of the narrative, in 
order to bring under one view the grounds which support our 
proposition. 

Day by day the joint pressure of the four Powers became 
Proofs drawn More cogent. By the Protocol of the 2nd of Feb- 
from transac- yyary the four Powers unanimously rejected the 

ons subse- Bate ° 

quent tothe | counter-propositions made by Russia. On the 14th 
Queen's Speech. of March both Austria and Prussia addressed cir- 
culars to the Courts of the German Confederation, in which 
they pointed out that the interests in question were essentially 
German interests, and that the active co-operation of Germany 
might be needed. On the 18th of March the King of Prussia 
asked his Chamber for an extraordinary credit of thirty mil- 
lion of thalers, and he at the same time declared that he would 
not swerve from the principles established by the Vienna Con- 
ference, and would faithfully protect every member of the Con- 
federation who, at an earlier moment than Prussia, might be 
called on to draw the sword for-the defense of German inter- 
ests. 

Nor were these bare words. Austria, it has been already 
said, was so placed that, whatever dangers she might draw 
upon her other frontiers, she could act with irresistible press- 
ure upon the invader of the Principalities. On the 6th and 
22nd of February she re-enforced her army on the frontier of 
Wallachia by 50,000 men, and thus placed the Russian army 
of occupation completely at her mercy. On the day when she 
sent that last re-enforcement into the Banat, she had grown so 
impatient of the farther continuance of the Russians in the 
Principalities that she actually pressed France and England to 
summon Russia to quit the Principalities under pain of a dec- 
laration of war, and undertook to support their summons.} 
Prussia was approving, and on the 25th Baron Manteuffel 
wrote to Count Arnim at Vienna ‘on the subject of the more 
‘decided policy which it was supposed the Austrian Govern- 
‘ment was about to adopt in the affairs of the East, and ex- 
‘pressed the satisfaction of the Prussian Government at the 
‘interests of Germany on the Danube being likely to be so 
‘svarmly espoused.’? On the 2nd of March the French Em- 
peror had so little doubt of the concurrence of Austria and 
Germany, that he announced it in his speech from the throne. 


1 ¢Kastern Papers,’ part vii., p. 53. ? Thid., p. 64. 


Cuar. XXV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 20s 


‘Germany,’ said he, ‘has recovered her independence, and has 
‘looked freely to see whither her true interests led her. Aus- 
‘tria especially, who can not see with indifference the events 
‘ going on, will join our alliance, and will thus come to confirm 
‘the morality and justice of the war which we undertake. We 
‘go to Constantinople with Germany.’ 

On the 20th of March the four Powers were so well agreed 
that, when Greece sought to make a diversion in favor of Rus- 
sia, the representatives of Austria, Prussia, France, and En- 
gland all joined in a collective Note which called upon the 
Greek Government in terms approaching menace to give way 


_ to the demands of the Porte. On the very day which followed 


the English declaration of war, the Emperor of Austria ap- 
pointed the Archduke Albert to the command of the forces on 
the frontier of Wallachia, and at the same time the ‘Third 
‘Army’ was put upon the war footing. A little later! the Em- 
peror of Austria ordered a new levy of 95,000 men for the de- 
fense of his frontiers. Later still, but within one day? of the 
time when France and England were making their alliance, 
Austria and Prussia joined with France and England in a Pro- 
tocol which not only recorded the fact that the hostile step 
then just taken by France and England was ‘supported by 
‘ Austria and Prussia as being founded in right,’ but went on 
to declare that ‘at that solemn moment the Governments of 
“the four Powers remained united in their object of maintain- 
‘ing the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, of which the fact of 
‘the evacuation of the Danubian Principalities is and will re- 
‘main one of the essential conditions,’ and that ‘ the territorial 
‘integrity of the Ottoman Empire is and remains the sine qud 
‘non condition of every transaction having for its object the 
‘re-establishment of peace between the belligerent Powers.’ 
Finally, the Protocol stipulated that none of the ‘four Powers 
‘should enter into any definitive arrangement with the Impe- 
‘rial Court of Russia which should be at variance with the 
‘principles declared by the Protocol without first deliberating 
‘thereon in common.’* 

On the 20th of April Austria and Prussia contracted with 
each other an offensive and defensive alliance, by which they 
guaranteed to each other all their respective possessions, so 
that an attack upon the territory of one should be regarded 
by the other as an act of hostility against his own territory, 
and engaged to hold part of their forces in perfect readiness 
for war. By the Second Article they declared that they stood 

1 May 15th. ? April 9th, 1854. 
8 “Eastern Papers,’ part vili., p. 2. 


278 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar, XXV., 


‘engaged to defend the rights and interests of Germany against 
‘all and every injury, and to consider themselves bound ac- 
‘cordingly for the mutual repulse of every attack on any part 
‘whatsoever of their territories; likewise also in the case 
‘where one of the two may find himself in understanding with © 
‘the others obliged to advance actively for the defense of Ger- 
‘man interests.”! 

By the Additional Article they declared ‘that the indefinite 
‘continuance of the occupation of the territories on the Lower 
‘Danube under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Porte by im- 
‘perial Russian troops would endanger the political, moral, and 
‘material interests of the whole German Confederation, as also 
‘of their own States, and the more so as Russia extends her 
‘warlike operations on Turkish territory ;? and then went on 
to stipulate ‘that the Austrian Government should address a 
‘communication to the Russian Court with the object of ob- 
‘taining from the Emperor of Russia the necessary orders for 
‘ putting an immediate stop to the farther advance of his armies 
‘upon the Turkish territory, as also to request of His Imperial 
‘Majesty sufficient guarantees for the prompt evacuation of 
‘the Danubian Principalities, and that the Prussian Govern- 
‘ment should again in the most energetic manner support 
‘these communications.’ Finally, the high contracting parties 
agreed that, ‘if, contrary to expectation, the answer of the 
‘Russian Court should not be of a nature to give them entire 
‘satisfaction, the measures to be taken by one of the contract- 
‘ing parties according to the terms of Article II. signed on 
‘that day, would be on the understanding that every hostile 
‘attack on the territory of one of the contracting parties should 
‘be repelled with all the military forces at the disposal of the 
‘ other.’2 

Of the intent and the meaning of this treaty and the use 
which Austria and Prussia were about to make of it no doubt 
could exist. Failing the peremptory summons which was to 
be addressed to Russia, the forces of Austria alone were to 
execute the easy task of expelling the troops of the Czar from 
the Principalities, and, in order to withstand the vengeance 
which this step might provoke, Austria and Prussia together 
stood leagued. . 

By the Protocol of the 23rd of:May the four Powers de- 
clared the Anglo-French treaty and the Austro-Prussian treaty 
bound the parties in the relative situations to which they ap- 
plied to secure the same common object, namely, the evacua- 


' ¢Kastern Papers,’ part ix., p. 3. ? Tbid., part x. 


Cuap. XXV.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 279 


tion of the Principalities and the integrity of the Ottoman 
Empire.! 

Now the mind and the solemn determination of Austria 
and Prussia being such as are shown by the Protocol of the 
9th and the treaty of the 20th April, where was there such a 
difference of opinion—where was there even such a shadow 
of a difference—as to justify the Western States in pushing 
forward and separating themselves from the rest of the four 
Powers? The avowed principles and objects of the four Pow- 
ers were exactly the same. If they had acted together, the 
very weight of their power would have given them an almost 
judicial authority, and would.have enabled them to. enforce 
the cause of right without wounding the pride of the disturb- 
er, and without inflicting war upon Europe. 

Was Austria backward? Was she so little prone to action 
that it was necessary for the Western Powers to move to the 
front and fight her battles for her? The reverse is the truth. 
The Western Powers indeed were more impatient than Ger- 
many was, to go through the forms which were necessary for 
bringing themselves legally into a state of war, but for action 
of a serious kind they were not yet ready. Whilst they were 
only preparing, Austria was applying force. On the 3rd of 
June, with the full support of Prussia, she summoned the Em- 
peror Nicholas to evacuate the Principalities. Her summons 
was the summons of a Power having an army on the edge of 
the province into which the Russian forces had been rashly 
extended. Such a summons was a mandate. The Czar could 
not disobey it. He could not stand in Wallachia when he was 
called upon to quit the province by a power which had assem- 
bled its forces upon his flank and rear. He sought indeed to 
make terms, but the German Powers were peremptory. On 
the 14th Austria entered into a conwention with the Porte, 
which not only legalized her determination to drive the Rus- 
sian forces from the Principalities, and to occupy them with 
her own troops, but which formally joined Austria in an alli- 
ance with the Porte against Russia; for, by the Ist Article of 
the convention, the Emperor of Austria ‘engages to exhaust 
‘all the means of negotiation and all other means to obtain 
‘the evacuation of the Danubian principalities by the foreign 
‘army which occupies them, and even to employ, in case they 
‘are required, the number of troops necessary to attain this 
‘end.’? And, since Russia could not invade European Turkey 
by land without marching through the Principalities, this un- 


' ‘Eastern Papers,’ part ix., p. 1. ? Tbid., part xii. 


280 TRANSACTIONS WHICH. [Cuap. XXV.: 


dertaking by Austria involved an engagement to free the Sul- 
tan’s land frontiers in Europe from Russian invasion. Exact- 
ly at the same time,! Austria and Prussia addressed notes to 
the Powers represented at the Conference of Bamberg, in 
which the liberation of the commerce and navigation of the 
Danube was held out to Germany as the object to be attained. 
Austria was upon the brink of war with Russia, was pre- 
The time when paring to take forcible possession of the Principali- 
the inserests Of ties, and had dispatched an officer to the English 
Prussia began Hlead-Quarters with a view to concert a joint 
to divide them 78 = 
fromthe West. SCheme of military operations, when the Czar at 
ern Powers. Jength gave way, and abandoned the whole of the 
territory which, under the nauseous description of a‘ material 
‘guarantee,’ had become the subject of war. Other causes, as 
will be seen, were conducing to this result, but none were so 
cogent as the forcible pressure which Austria had exerted, by 
first assembling forces in the Banat, and then summoning the 
Czar to withdraw from the invaded provinces.- | 
Of course, when the object which called forth the German 
Powers was attained, and when it transpired (as it did at the 
same time) that the Western Powers were resolved to aban- 
don the common field of action, and to undertake the invasion 
by sea of a distant Russian province, inaccessible to Austria 
and Prussia, then at last, and then for the first time, the Ger- 
man Powers found that their interests were parting them from 
the great maritime States of the West, for in one and the same 
week they were relieved from the grievance which was their 
motive for action, and deprived of all hope of support from the 
From firstto Western Powers; but it is certain that from the 
last Austria moment when the Czar first seized the Principali- 
and Prussia ° . . 
never swerved ties, to that in which he recrossed the Pruth, the 
from their re- determination of Austria to put an end to the in- 
the Czar'sre- trusion was never languid, and was always increas- 
vie pet ing in force. It is certain, also, that up to the time 
palities. when the relinquishment of the Principalities he- 


gan, there was no defection on the part of Prussia,” and that 


1 14th and 16th of June. 

2 Prussia began to hang back, it seems, on about the 21st of July, ‘ East~- 
ern Papers,’ part xi., p.1; and this was exactly the time when her interests 
counseled her to do so, for by that day she knew that the deliverance of the 
Principalities was secured and in process of execution, and had also no doubt 
learned of the determination of the Western Powers to move their forces to 
the Crimea, thereby uncovering Germany. Austria, with similar motives for 
separation, was less inclined to part from the Western Powers. See her 
Note of the 8th August, 1854, and the various diplomatic transactions in 
which she took part down to the close of the war. 


Cuar. XXVI.J BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 281 


the minor States of Germany, fully alive to the importance of 

a struggle which promised to free the great outlet of the Dan- 
abe from Russian dominion, were resolved to support Austria 
and Prussia with the troops of the Confederation. As soon 
as the Principalities were relinquished by the Czar they were 
occupied by Austrian troops, in pursuance of the convention 
with the Porte; and thus the outrage, which during twelve 
months had disturbed the tranquillity of Europe, was then at 
last finally repressed. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


For the sake of bringing under one view the course of ac- 
tion followed by the German powers, down to the moment 
when their object was achieved by the deliverance of the Prin- 
cipalities, it has been necessary, as we have said, to go forward 
in advance of the period reached by the main thread of the 
narrative. The subject thus quitted for a moment and now 
resumed, is the policy which was disclosed by the English Gov- 
ernment upon the opening of Parliament. 

Distinct from the martial ardor already kindled in England, 
spirit of war. there had sprung up amongst the people an almost 
like adventure romantic craving for war like adventure, and this 
in England. feeling was not ‘slow to reach the Cabinet. Now, 
without severance from the German Powers there could plainly 
be little prospect of adventure; for, besides that the German 
monarchs desired to free the Pr incipalities with as little resort 
to hostilities as might be compatible with the attainment of the 
end, it was almost certain that the policy of keeping up the 
perfect union and co-operation of the four Powers would pre- 
vent war by its overwhelming force. Like the power of the 
law, it would operate by coercion, and not by clangor of arms. 
This was a merit, but it was a merit fatal to its reception in 
England. The popularity of such a policy was nearly upon the 
The bearing of Same modest level as the popularity of virtue. All 
this spirit up- whose volitions were governed by the imagined 
on the policy 
of the Govern. Tupture of freeing Poland, or destroying Cronstadt, 
oa. and lording it with our fi ig in the Baltic; or taking 


1 20th July, 1854. The relinquishment of the Principalities virtually be- 
gan on the 26th of June—the day when the siege of Silistria was raised, and 
before the end of July the Russian forces had quitted the capital of Walia- 
chia. On the 2nd of August they repassed the Pruth. 


282 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XXVIL 


command of the Euxine, and sinking the Russian fleet under ~ 
the guns of Sebastopol; all who meant to raise Circassia and 
eut off the Muscovite from the glowing South by holding the 
Dariel Pass, and those also who dwelt in fancy upon deeds to 
be done on the shores of the Caspian ; all these and many more 
saw plainly enough that separation from the German Powers 
and alliance with the new Bonaparte was the only road to ad- . 
venture. Lord Aberdéen was not one of these; but it was his 
fate to act as though he were. He was not without a glim- 
mering perception that the firmly-maintained union of the four 
Powers meant peace ;! but he saw the truth dimly, and, there 
being a certain slowness in his high intellectual nature, he was 
not so touched by his belief as to be able to make it the guide 
of his action. He seems to have gone on imagining that, con- 
sistently with the maintenance of a perfect union of the four 
Powers, there might be a separate and still more perfect union 
between two of them, and that this kind of alliance within al- 
liance was a structure not fatal—nay, even perhaps conducive 
to— peace. 

And after all, England was not free. She was bound to the 
England was French Emperor. No treaty of alliance had been 
under engage- sjoned, but the understanding disclosed in the sum- 
ments with the - ° 
French Empe- Mer of the year before was still riveted upon the 
a i members of the English Government. .They had 
been drawn into a weighty engagement in 1853, and now they 
had to perform it. In the midst of perfect concord between 
her and her three allies, England had to stand forward with 
one of them in advance of the rest, and thus ruin that security 
for the maintenance of peace which depended upon the united 
action of the four great Powers. As the price of his consent- 
ing to join reluctant France in an alliance with Turkey, the 
French Emperor was justly entitled to insist on the other terms: 
of the bond, and not only to be signally coupled with England 
in a course of action which was to separate her from the great 
German States, but to have it blazoned out to the world be- 
forehand that, distinctly-from the concord of the four Rowers, 
the Queen of England and he were acting together. The 
Royal Speech of January, 1854, was as clear in this as the 
Speech of the previous August. Both disclosed a separate un- 
derstanding with the French Emperor. In both, as any one 
could see who was used to state writings, the mark was set 
upon England with the same branding-iron. 

To a man looking back upon the past, it seems strange that 


* 129 Hansard, p. 1650. 


Cuar. XXVI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 283 


a Cabinet of English statesmen could have been led to adopt 
this singular policy. It would seem that with many of the 
Into thispolicy Cabinet the tendency of the measures which they 
the bulk of the : Clue : 4 

Cabinet drift, Were sanctioning was ‘concealed from them by the 
ed. gentleness of the incline on which they moved ; and 
if there were some of them who had a clearer view of their 
motives, it must be inferred that they acted upon grounds not 
yet disclosed to the world. Of course, what the welfare of the 
State required was a ministry which shared and honored the 
public feeling without being so carried down by it as to lose 
the statesman’s power of understanding and controlling events. 
But this was not given. Of the bulk of the Cabinet, and pos- 
sibly of all of them except one, Lord Clarendon’s pithy phrase 
was the true one. They drifted. Wishing to control events, 
they were controlled by them. They aimed to go in one di- 
rection, but, lapsing under pressure of forces external and mis- 
understood, they always went in the other. 

The statesman who went his own way was one whose share 
The Minister 12 the governance of events was not much known. 
who went his He was supposed to be under a kind of ostracism. 
Boats He had not been banished from England nor even 
from the Cabinet; but, holding oftice under a Prime Minister 
whose views upon foreign policy were much opposed to his 
own, and relegated to duties connected with the peaceful ad- 
ministration of justice, it seemed to the eye of the common ob- 
server that for the time he was annulled; and the humorous 
stories which floated about Whitehall went to show that the 
deposed Lord of Foreign Affairs had consented to forget his 
former greatness and to accept his Home Office duties in a 
spirit of half-cynical, half-joyous disdain, but without the least 
discontent. And in truth he had no ground for ill humor. 
In politics he was without vanity. What he cared for was 
power, and power he had. Indeed, circumstanced as he then 
was, he must have known that one of the main conditions of 
his strength was the general belief that he had none. The 
light of the past makes it easy to see that the expedient of 
trying to tether him down in the Home Office would allevi- 
ate his responsibility and increase his real power. To those 
who know any thing of Lord Palmerston’s intellectual power, 
of his boldness, his vast and coneentrated energy, his instinct 
for understanding the collective mind of a body of men and of 
a whole nation, and, above all, his firm, robust will; nay, even 
to those who only know of his daring achievements—achieve- 
ments half peaceful, half warlike, half righteous, half violent in 
many lands and on many a sea—the notion of causing him to 


284 ‘TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXVI 


be subordinated to Lord Aberdeen in Foreign Affairs seems 
hardly more sound than a scheme providing that the greater 
shall be contained in the less. Statesmen on the Continent 
would easily understand this, for they had lived much under 
the weight of his strenuous nature; but at that time he had 
not been much called upon to apply his energies to the domes- 
tic affairs of England. Besides, he had been more seen in his 
own country than abroad, and for that very reason he was 
less known, because there was much upon the mere outside 
which tended to mask his real nature. His partly Celtic blood, 
and perhaps too in early life his boyish consciousness of power, 
had given him a certain elation of manner and bearing which 
kept him for a long time out of the good graces of the more 
fastidious. part of the English world. The defect was toned 
down by age, for it lay upon the surface only, and in his inner 
nature there was nothing vulgar nor unduly pretending. Still, 
the defect made people slow—made them take forty years—to 
recognize the full measure of his intellectual strength. More- 
over, the English had so imperfect a knowledge of the stress 
which he had long been putting upon foreign Governments, 
that the mere outward signs which he gave to his countrymen 
at home—his frank speech, his offhand manner, his ready ban- 
ter, his kind, joyous, beaming eyes—were enough to prevent 
them from accustoming themselves to look upon “him as a man 
of stern purpose. Upon the whole, notwithstanding his Eu- 
ropean fame, it was easy for him at this time to escape grave 
attention in England. 

He was not a man who would come to a subject with which 
he was dealing for the first time with any great store of pre- 
conceived opinions, but he wrote so strenuously—he always, 
they say, wrote standing—and was apt to be so much struck 
with the cogency of his own arguments, that by the mere 
process of framing dispatches, he wrought himself into strong 
convictions, or rather perhaps into strong resolves; and he 
clung to these with such a lasting tenacity, that, if he had been 
a solemn, austere personage, the world would have accused him 
of pedantry. Like most gifted men who evolve their thoughts 
with a pen, he was very clear, very accurate. Of every subject 
which he handled gravely he had a tight, iron grasp. With- 
out being inflexible, his will, it has been already said, was pow- 
erful, and it swung with a great momentum in one direction 
until, for some good and sound reason, it turned and swung in 
another. He pursued one object at a time without being dis- 
tracted by other game. All that was fanciful or for any reason 
unpractical, all that was the least bit too high for him, or the 


Cuar. XXVIL] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 285 


least bit too deep for him, all that lay, though only by a little, 
beyond the immediate future with which he was dealing, he 
utterly drove from out of his mind; and his energies, con- 
densed for the time upon some object to which they could be 
applied with effect, were brought to bear upon it with all 
their full volume and power. So, during the whole period of 
his reign at the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston’s method had 
been to be very strenuous in the pursuit of the object which 
might be needing care at any given time, without suffering 
himself to be embarrassed by what men call a‘ comprehensive’ 
view of our foreign policy; and, although it was no doubt his 
concentrative habit of mind and his stirrmg temperament which 
brought him into this course of action, he was much supported 
in it by the people at home; for, when no enterprise is on foot, 
the bulk of the English are prone to be careless of the friend- 
ship of foreign States, and are often much pleased when they | 
are told that by reason of the activity of their Foreign Secre- 
tary they are without an ally in Europe. 

Other statesmen had been accustomed to think that the prin- 
ciple which ought in general to determine the closeness of our 
relations with for eign States was ‘community of interests 
and that in proportion as this principle was departed from, 
under the varied impulses of philanthropy or other like mo- 
tives, disturbance, isolation, and danger would follow; but Lord 
Palmerston had never suffered this maxim to interfere with 
any special object which he might chance to have in hand at 
the moment, nor even with his desire to spread abroad the 
blessings of constitutional government. 

As long as Lord Gray was at the head of the Government 
the energy of the Foreign Office was kept down, and even aft- 
er the first five years of Lord Melbourne’s Administration the 
disruption toward which it was tending had made so little way, 
that when, in 1840, the Ottoman Empire was threatened with 
ruin by France and her Egyptian ally, Lord Palmerston, with 
a majority of only two or three in thé House of Commons , but 
having a bold heart and a firm, steady hand, had been able to 
gather up the elements of the great alliance of 1814, and to 
prevent a European war by the very might, and power, and 
swiftness with which he executed his policy; but at the end 
of eleven more years,! when his career at the Foreign Office 


1 It is not forgotten that during a large portion of this last period Lord 
Aberdeen was at the Foreign Office, but he was of course much bound by 
what his predecessors had been doing before him, and, speaking roughly, it 
may be said that from the spring of 1835 until the close of 1841, our foreign 
policy bore the impress of Lord Palmerston’s mind. In the period between 


286 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXVI- 


was drawing to a close, his energy had cleared a space round 
him, and he seemed to be left standing alone. 

His system by that time had fairly disclosed its true worth. 
Pursued with great vigor and skill, it had brought results cor- 
responding with the numerous aims of its author, but corre- 
sponding also with his avowed disregard of a general guiding 
principle. Without breaking the general peace of Europe, it 
had produced a long series of diplomatic enterprises, pushed 
on in most instances to a successful issue; but, on the other 
hand, it had ended by making the Foreign Office an object of 
distrust, and in that way withdrawing England from her due 
place in the composition of the European system ; for the good 
old safe clew of ‘community of interests’ being visibly discard- 
ed, no Power, however closely bound to us by the nature of 
things, could venture to rely upon our friendship. States 
whose interests in great European questions were exactly the 
same as our own, States which had always looked to the wel- 
fare and strength of England as main conditions of their own 
safety, found no more favor with us than those who consumed 
much of their revenue in preparing implements for the slaugh- 
ter of Englishmen and the sinking of English ships. They 
were therefore obliged to shape their policy upon the suppo- 
sifion that any slight matter in which the Foreign Office might 
chance to be interesting itself at the moment—nay, even a dif- 
ference of opinion upon questions of internal government (and 
this, be it remembered, was an apple which could always be 
thrown) would be enough to make England repulse them. 
From this cause, perhaps, more than from any other, there had 
sprung up in Germany that semblance of close friendship with 
the Court of St. Petersburg which had helped to allure the 
Czar into dangerous paths. 

From the Emperor Nicholas Lord Palmerston was. cut off 
not only by differences arising out of questions on which the 
policy of Russia and of England might naturally clash, but 
also because he was looked upon as the promoter of doctrines 
which the Court of St. Petersburg was accustomed to treat as 
revolutionary. Even to Austria, although we were close bound 
to her by common interests, although there was no one nation- 
al interest which tended to divide us from her, he had in this 
way become antagonistic. He had too much lustiness of mind, 
too much simplicity of purpose to be capable of living on terms 
of close intelligence with the philosophical statesmen of Ber- 
lin. To the accustomed foreign policy of French statesmen— 


November 1830, and the autumn of 1834, it was much governed by the then 
Prime Minister, Lord Gray. 


Cuap. XXVI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 287 


in other words, to the France that he had been used to encoun- 
ter in the Foreign Office—he was adverse by very habit. He 
spurned the whole invention of the French Republic. But his 
favorite hatred of all was his hatred of the House of Bourbon.! 
In short, by the Ist of December, 1851, though still at the For- 
eign Office, he had become isolated in Europe. But fortune 
smiles on bold men. ‘The next night Prince Louis Bonaparte 
and his fellow venturers destroyed the French republic, super- 
seded the Bourbons, and suppressed France. | Plainly this 
Prince and Lord Palmerston were men who could act togeth- 
er—could act together until the Prince should advise himself 
to deceive the English Minister. Not longer: not an hour be- 
yond the time when the momentous promise which was made 
—if I mistake not—before the events of December, should re- 
main unbroken. 

So, when the Czar began to encroach upon the Sultan, there 
was nothing that could so completely meet Lord Palmerston’s 
every wish as an alliance between the two Western Powers, 
which should toss France headlong into the English policy of 
upholding the Ottoman Empire; and the price of this was a 
price which—far from grudging—he would actually delight to 
pay; for, desiring to have the Governments of France and 
England actively united together for an English object, desir- 
ing to prevent a revival of the French republic, and, above all, 
to prevent a restoration of the House of Bourbon, he was only 
too glad to be able to strengthen the new Emperor’s hold upon 
France by exalting his personal station, and giving him the 
support of a close, separate, and published alliance with the 
Queen of England. And, in regard to the dislocation which 
such a new policy might work, he seems not to have set so 
high a value upon the existing framework of the European 
system as to believe that its destruction would be a portentous 
evil. If he thought it an evil at all, he thought it one which 
a strong man might repair. He yet lives, and now this very 
task is upon him. He meets it without suffering himself to be 
distracted by the remnant of any old illusion. He meets it, 
too, as becomes him, without shrinking or fear. A resolute 
people stand round him. Upon the issue of this, his last and 
mightiest labor, his fame, he well knows, will have to rest. 

Lord Palmerston had been at the head of the Foreign Office 
during so many years of his life, and he had brought to bear’ 
upon its duties an activity so restless, and (upon the whole) so 
much steadfastness of purpose, that the more recent foreign 


' This feeling probably drew its origin from the business of the ‘Spanish 
Marriages.’ . ; 


288 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ~ [CHap. XXVI. 


policy of England, whether it had been right or whether it had 
been wrong, was in him almost incarnate. It was obvious 
therefore that, whilst he was in the Cabinet, he would always 
be resorted to for counsel upon foreign affairs by any of his 
colleagues who were not divided from him by strong differ- 
ence of opinion, by political antagonism, or by personal dislike. 
Again, it was scarcely wise to believe that the relations which 
had subsisted between Lord Palmerston and the President of 
the French Republic would be closed by the fact that they 
had led to Lord Palmerston’s dismissal from the Secretaryship 
of Foreign Affairs. On the contrary, it was to be inferred that 
communications of a most friendly kind would continue to pass 
between the French Emperor and an English Minister who 
had suffered for his sake; and the very same manliness of dis- 
position which would prevent him from engaging in any thing 
like an underhand intrigue against his colleagues, would make 
him refuse to sit dumb when, in words brought him fresh from 
the Tuileries, an ambassador came to talk to him of the Kast- 
ern Question, came to tell him that the new Emperor had an 
unbounded confidence in his judgment, wished to be governed 
by his counsels, and, in short, would dispose of poor France as 
the English minister wished. 

Here, then, was the real bridge by which French overtures 
of the more secret and delicate sort would come from over the 
Channel. Here was the bridge by which England’s accept- 
ance or rejection of all such overtures would go back to France. 

Thus, from the ascendency of his strong nature, from his vast 
experience, and from his command of the motive-power which 
he could bring at any moment from Paris, Lord Palmerston, 
even so early as the spring of 1853, was the most puissant 
member of Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet; and when, with all these 
sources of strength, he began to draw support from a people 
growing every day more and more warlike, he gained a com- 
plete dominion. If, after the catastrophe of Sinope, his col- 
leagues had persevered in their attempt to resist him, he would 
have been able to overthrow them with ease upon the meeting 
of Parliament. 

Therefore, in the transactions which brought on the war, 
Lord Palmerston was not drifting. He was joyfully laying 
his course. Whither he meant to go, thither he went; whith- 
er he chose that others should tend, thither they bent their re- 
luctant way. _If some Immortal were to offer the surviving 
members of Lord Aberdeen’s Government the privilege of re- 
tracing their steps with all the light of experience, every one 
of them perhaps, with only a single exception, would examine 


Cuap. XXVI.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 289 


the official papers of 1853 in order to see where he could most 
wisely diverge from the course which the Cabinet took. Lord 
Palmerston would do nothing of the kind. What he had done 
before, he would do again. 

Lord Palmerston’s plan of masking the warlike tendency of 
Hisvay of the Government was an application to politics of 
ae the an ingenious contrivance which the Parisians used 
the Govern to employ in some of their street engagements with 
Tey the soldiery. The contrivance was called ‘a live 
‘barricade.’ A body of the insurgents would seize the mayor 
of the arrondissement and a priest (if they could get one), and 
also one or two respectable bankers devoted to the cause of 
peace and order. .'These prisoners, each forced to walk arm- 
in-arm between able-bodied combatants, were marched in front 
of a body of insurgents, which boldly advanced toward a spot 
where a battalion of infantry might be drawn up in close col- 
umns of companies, but-when they got to within hailing dis- 
tance, one of the insurgents, gifted with a loud voice, would 
shout out to the troops: ‘Soldiers! respect the cause of order! 
‘Don’t fire on Mr. Mayor! Respect property! Don’t level 
‘your country’s muskets at one who is a man and a brother, 
“and also a respectable banker! Soldiers! for the love of God 
“don’t imbrue your hands in the blood of this holy priest! 
Confused by this appeal, and shrinking, as was natural, from 
the duty of killing peaceful citizens, the battalion would hesi- 
tate, and mean time the column of the insurgents, covered al- 
ways by its live barricade, would rapidly advance and crowd 
in upon the battalion, and break its structure and ruin it. It 
was thus that Lord Palmerston had the skill to protrude Lord 
Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone, and keep them standing forward 
in the van of a Ministry which was bringing the country into 
war. No one could assail Lord Palmerston’s policy without 
striking at him through men whose conscientious attachment 
to the cause of peace was beyond the reach of cavil. 

In the debates which took place upon the Address, the 
Debates upon Speeches of the unoffieial members of Parliament in 
the Address. oth Houses disclosed a strange want of acquaint- 
ance with the character and spirit of the negotiations which 
had been going on for the last eight months. Confiding in the 
Parliament Peaceful tendency of a Government headed by Lord 
still in the Aberdeen, and having Mr. Gladstone for one of its 
maha foremost members, Mr. Bright, in the summer of 
of the Govern. 1853, had deprecated all discussion, and, under his 

encouragement, the Government, after some_hesi- 
tation, determined to withhold the production of the papers. 

Vor, L—N ; 


290 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuapr. XXVIb 


With the lights which he then had, Mr. Bright was perhaps 
entitled to believe that the course he took was the right one, 
and the intention of the Government was not only honest, but 
in some degree self-sacrificing, for it can not be doubted that 
the disclosure of the able and high-spirited dispatches of Lord 
Clarendon would have raised the Government in public esteem. 
It is now certain, however, that the disclosure of the papers in 
the August of 1853 would have enabled the friends of peace 
to take up a strong ground, to give a new turn to opinion 
whilst yet there was time, and to save themselves from the 
utter discomfiture which they underwent in the interval be-. 
tween the prorogation and the meeting of Parliament. 

The Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen was not famous for its pow- 
er of preventing the leakage of state matters, but the common 
indiscretion by which simple facts are noised abroad does not 
suffice to disclose the general tenor and bearing of a long and 
intricate negotiation. Besides, in the-absence of means of au- 
thentic knowledge, there were circumstances which raised pre- 
sumptions opposite to the truth. Of course the chief of these: 
was the retention of office by two men whose attachment to 
the cause of peace was believed to be passionately strong; but: 
it chanced, moreover, that publicity had been given to a highly- 
spirited and able dispatch, the production of the French For- 
eign Office; and, since there had transpired no proof of a cor- 
responding energy on the part of England, it was wrongly in- 
ferred that Lord Aberdeen’s Government was hanging back. 
Accordingly, Ministers were taunted for this supposed fault by 
almost all the speakers in either house. What the Govern- 
ment were chargeable with was an undue forwardness in caus- 
ing England to join with France alone in the performance of a 
duty which was European in its nature, and devolving in the 
first instance upon Austria. What they were charged with 
was a want of readiness to do that which they had done. 
Therefore every one who spoke against the Ministry was com- 
mitting himself to opinions which (as soon as their real course 
of action should be disclosed) would involve him in an approval 
of their policy. | 
~ But now at last, and within a day or two from the concelu- 
Production of Sion of the debate on the Address, some of the pa- 
_ the papers. pers relating to the negotiations of 1853 and the 
preceding years were laid upon the table of both Houses. As. 
soon as the more devoted friends of peace were able to read 
these documents, and in some degree to comprehend their 
scope and bearing, they began to see how their 


Their effect. > : : : > 
cause had fared under the official guardianship of. 


Cuap. XXVI.J) BROUGHT ON THE WAK. 291 


Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone. They began to see that 
for near eight months the Government had been following a 
course of action which was gently leading toward war. They 
did not, however, make out the way in which the deflection 
began. They did not see that the way in which the Govern- 
ment had lapsed from the paths of peace was by quitting the 
common ground of the four Powers for the sake of a closer 
union with one, and by joining with the French Emperor in 
making a perverse use of the fleets. | 

Mr. Cobden fastened upon the ‘ Vienna Note,’ and, with his 
views, he was right in drawing attention to the apparent nar- 
rowness of the difference upon which the question of peace or 
war was made to depend; but he surely betrayed a want of. 
knowledge of the way in which the actions of mankind are 
governed when he asked that a country now glowing with 
warlike ardor should go back and try to obtain peace by re- 
suming a form of words which its Government had solemnly 
repudiated four months before. Of course this effort failed ; 
it could not be otherwise. Any one acquainted with the tenor 
of the negotiations, and with enough of the surrounding facts 
to make the papers intelligible, may be able to judge whether 
there were not better grounds than this for making a stand 


‘against the war. The evil demanding redress was the intru- 


sion of the Russian forces into Wallachia and Moldavia, and 
it would seem that the judgment to be pronounced by Parlia- 
ment upon a Government which had led their country to the 
brink of war should have been made to depend upon this 
question : . 

Was it practicable for England to obtain the deliverance of 
The question the Principalities by means taken in common with 
costo the rest of the four Powers, and without resorting 
thou have, vo the expedient of a separate understanding with 

uld have 
been rested. the French Emperor? 

It may be that to this question the surviving members of 
Lord Aberdeen’s Administration can establish a negative an- 
swer, but in order to do this they will have to make use of 
knowledge not hitherto disclosed to Parliament. 

A belief, nay, even a suspicion that there was danger of a 
sudden alliance between the French Emperor and the Czar 
would gravely alter the conditions upon which Lord Aber- 
deen’s Cabinet was called upon to form its judgment; but, so 
far as the outer world knows, no fear of this kind was coercing 
the Government. Upon the papers as they stand, it seems 
clear that, by remaining upon the ground occupied by the four 
Powers, England would have obtained the deliverance of the 
Principalities without resorting to war. 


292 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [CuHar. XXVIL 


CHAPTER XXVIL. 


Tuer last of the steps which brought on the final rupture be- 
tween Russia and the Western Powers was perhaps one of the 
most anomalous transactions which the annals of diplomacy 
have recorded. The outrage to be redressed was the occupa- 
tion by Russia of Wallachia and Moldavia, Of all the States 
of Europe, except Turkey itself, the one most aggrieved by 
this occupation was Austria. Now Austria was one of the 
great Powers of Europe. She was essentially a military State. 
She was the mistress of a vast and well-appointed army. She 
was the neighbor of Russia. Geographically, she was so 
placed that (whatever perils she might bring upon her other 
frontiers) her mere order to her officer commanding her army 
of observation would necessarily force the Czar to withdraw 
his troops. On the other hand, France and England, though 


justly offended by the outrage, and though called upon in 


their character as two of the great Powers to concur in fit 
measures for suppressing it, were far from being brought into 
any grievous stress by the occupation of the far distant Prin- 
cipalities, and moreover the evil, such as it was, was one which 
they could not dispel by any easy or simple application of 
force. 

It was in this condition of things that Austria suddenly con- 
Austria pro.  Veyed to France, and through France to England, 
poses that the intimation of the 22nd of February. In con- 
sean versation with Baron de Bourqueny, Count Buol 


gland should ‘ : : 
pager said, ‘If England and France will fix a day for the 
the Principal ‘evacuation of the Principalities, the expiration of 
ties, and threat- ¢ which shall be the signal for hostilities, the Cabi- 
result of his re- ‘net of Vienna will support the summons. The 
we telegraph conveyed the tenor of this intimation to 
London on the same day. Naturally, it was to be expected 
that Austria would join in a summons which she invited other 
Powers to send, and to this hour it seems hardly possible to 
believe that the Emperor of Austria deliberately intended to 
ask France and England to fix a day for going to war without 


meaning to go to war himself at the same time. Lord Claren- 


1 ‘Eastern Papers,’ part vii., p. 53. 


~ 


Cuap. XXVII-J BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 293 


don, however, asked the question. Apparently he was not an- 
swered in terms corresponding with his question, but he was 
again told that Austria would ‘support’ the summons. Then 
all at once, and without stipulating for the concurrence of the 
Power which was pressing them into action, the Governments 
of France and England prepared the instruments which were 
to bring them into a state of war with Russia. 

Austria at this period had plainly resolved to go to war, if 
the Principalities should not be relinquished by the Czar; but, 
Importance of before she could take the final step, it was necessary 
avoiding haste. foy her to come to an understanding with Prussia. 
This she succeeded in doing within twenty-four days from the 
period of the final rupture between Russia and the Western 
Powers; but France and England could not bear to wait. 
The French Emperor, rebuffed by the Czar in his endeavor to 
appear as the pacificator of Europe, was driven to the opposite 
method of diverting France from herself; and although the 
crisis was one in which a little delay, and a little calmness, 
would have substituted the coercive action of the four Powers 
foran adventurous war by the two, he once more goaded our 
Government on, and pressed it into instant action. M.Drouyn 
Pressure ofthe @¢ Lhuys declared that in his opinion the sending 
French Em- of the proposed summons was a business which 
ae ‘should be done immediately, and that the two 
‘Governments should write to Count Nesselrode to demand 
‘the immediate’ withdrawal of the Russian troops from the 
Principalities—‘the whole to be concluded by a given time, 
‘say the end of March.”! It must be owned, however, that the 
Eagerness of English people were pressing their Government in 
the people in the same direction. Inflamed with a longing for 

im naval glory in the Baltic, they had become torment- 
ed with a fear lest their Admiral should be hindered from great 
achievements for want of the mere legal formality which was 
to constitute a state of war. The majority of the Cabinet, 
though numbering on their side several of the foremost states- 
The Govern. Men of the day, were collectively too weak to help 
ment loses its being driven by the French Emperor, too weak to 
see help being infected by the warlike eagerness of the 
people, too weak to resist the strong man who was amongst 
them without being of them. It is likely enough that states- 
men so gifted as some of them were must have had better 
grounds for their way of acting than have been hitherto dis- 
closed; but, to one who only judges from the materials com- 


' ¢Hastern Papers,’ part vii., p. 53. 


994 ‘TRANSACTIONS WHICH (Cuar. XXVIT 


municated to Parliament, it seems plain that at this time they 
had lost their composure. 

By the summons dispatched on the part of England Lord 
The summons ©/arendon informed Count Nesselrode that, unless 
dispatched by the Russian Government within six days from the 
meee delivery of the summons should send an answer en- 
gaging to withdraw all its troops from the Principalities by 
the 30th of April, its refusal or omission so to do would be re- 
garded by England as a declaration of war. This summons 
was in accordance with the suggestion of Austria, and what 
might have been expected was that the Western Powers, in 
acceding to her wish, should do so upon the understanding 
that she concurred in the measure which she herself proposed, 
and that they would consult her as to the day on which it 
would be convenient for her to enter into a state of war; in 
other words, that they would consult her as to the day on 
which a continued refusal to quit the Principalities should 
bring the Czar into a state of war with Austria, France, and 
England. Instead of taking this course, Lord Clarendon a 
warded the summons (not as a draught or project, but as 
document already signed and complete) to the Court of Vien. 
na, and it was dispatched by a messenger who (after remaining 
Instructions to for only a ‘few hours’ in the Austrian capital) was 
the messenger. to carry on the summons to St. Petersburg. There- 
fore Austria was made aware that, whether she was willing to 
defend her own interests or not, England was irrevocably com: 
mitted to defend them for her; and, instead of requiring that 
Austria should take part in the step which she herself had ad- 
Ana to tora Wi8ed, Lord W-estmorland was merely instructed to 
Westmorland. express a hope that the summons ‘ would meet with 
Mute ‘the approval of the Austrian Cabinet, and that 
part in the their opinion of it would be made known by Count 
which she had Buol to the Cabinet of St.Petersburg. Such a step 
herself sug- ag this on the part of Avstria was preposterously 
cate short of what the Western Powers would have had 
a right to expect from her, if they had been a little less eager. 
for hostilities, and had consulted her as to the time for coming 
to a rupture. 

Of course the impatience of France and England was ruin- 
ous to the principle of maintaining concert between the four 
Pow ers, and what made it the more lamentable was that it did 
not spring from any sound military views. It is true that the 
Western Powers were sending troops to the Levant and fit- 
ting out fleets for the Baltic; but there was nothing in the 
state of ‘heir preparations, nor in the position of the respective 


Cuap. XXVII.} BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 295 


forces, which could justify their eagerness to accelerate the dec- 
laration of war. 

It chanced that simultaneously with the arrival of the En- 
The counter- glish messenger at Vienna, there came thither from 
Proposals oi, St. Petersburg the counter-propositions of Russia, 
Vienna at the Count Buol saw the importance of disposing of these 


the Engin before the summons went on to St. Petersburg; so, 
messenger. after persuading Lord Westmorland to detain the 
English messenger, he instantly assembled the Conference of 
Meurer (the four Powers. By this Conference the counter- 
accted by the propositions of Russia were unanimously rejected,! 
the four Pow- and the bearer of the summons carried this decision 
Mh of the four Powers to St. Petersburg, together with 
a dispatch from the Austrian Government instructing Count 
Esterhazy to support the summons, and throwing upon Russia 
the responsibility of the impending war.? The dispatch, how- 
ever, fell short of announcing that the refusal to quit the Prin- 
cipalities would place the Czar in a state of war with Austria 
as well as with the Western Powers. Prussia supported the 
summons in language corresponding with the language of the 
Vienna Cabinet. Baron Manteuffel’s dispatch to St. Peters- 
Austrinang DUrg ‘was drawn up in very pressing language. It 
Prussia ‘ sup- Curged the Russian Government to consider the 
LEU Reahey ‘dangers to which the peace of the world would 
out taking part * be exposed by a retusal, and declared that the re- 
inthe step. ¢ sponsibility of the war which might be the conse- 
S 

‘quence of that refusal would rest with the Emperor.’? 

The summons addressed by France to the Russian Govern- 
The French Ment was in the same terms as the summons dis- 
eta patched by Lord Clarendon, and was forwarded at 
the same time. 

Atter receiving the summons of the two Governments, Count 
Franceand Nesselrode took the final orders of his master; and 
Englind then informed the Consuls of France and England 
brought intoa 
state of war that the Emperor did not think fit to send any an- 
with Russia. swer to their Notes. -A refusal to answer was one 
of the events which under the terms of the announcement con- 
tained in the summons was to be regarded by the Western 
Powers as a declaration of war. This refusal was uttered by 
Count Nesselrode on the 19th of March,1854. The peace be- 
tween the great Powers of Europe had lasted more than thirty- 
eight years, and now at length it was broken. 

1 The Conference unanimously agreed that it was impossible to ‘ proceed 


‘with those propositions.’—Protocol of Conference of March 5th. ‘ Eastern 
‘Papers,’ part vii., p. 80. ? Ibid., p. 64. 3 Ibid., p. 72. 


296 TRANSACTIONS. WHICH |Cuar. XXVIL 


- On the 27th of March a message from the Emperor of the 
Message from French informed his Senate and Legislative Assem- 
Emperorte the Dly that the last determination of the Cabinet of St. 
Chambers. —- Petersburg had placed France and Russia in a state 
of war. In his speech from the throne at the opening of the 
session! he had already declared that war was upon the point 
of commencing. ‘To avoid a conflict,’ he said, ‘I have gone 
‘as far as honor allowed. Europe now knows that if France 
‘draws the sword, it is because she is constrained to do so. 
‘Kurope knows that France has no idea of aggrandizement. 
‘She only wishes to resist dangerous encroachments. The 
‘time of conquests has passed away, never to return. This 
‘policy has had for its result a more intimate alliance between 
‘England and France.’ It is curious to observe that only a 
few hours after the time when England became inextricably 
engaved with him in a joint war against Russia, and in the 
same speech in which he announced the fact, the French Em- 
peror acknowledged the value and the practicability of the 
wholesome policy which he had just then superseded by draw- 
ing the Cabinet of London into a separate alliance with him- 
self; but when he was declaring, in words already quoted, that 
‘Germany had recovered her political independence, that Aus- 
‘tria would enter into the alliance, and that the Western Pow- 
‘ers would go to Constantinople along with Germany,’ he had 
the happiness of knowing that the baneful summons which was 
to bring France and England into aseparate course of action, 
and place them at last in a state of war, had been signed by 
the English Minister for Foreign Affairs, and was already on 
the way to St. Petersburg.’ 

On the same 27th of March a message from the Queen an- 
Message from NOunced to Parliament that the negotiations with 
the Queen to Russia were broken off, and that her Majesty, feel- 
Parliament. ing bound to give active aid to the Sultan, relied 
upon the efforts of her faithful subjects to aid her in protecting 
the states of the Sultan against the encroachments of*Russia. 
Declaration of On the following day the English declaration of war 
Wes was issued. The labor of putting into writing the 
grounds for a momentous course of action is a wholesome dis- 
cipline for statesmen; and it would be well for mankind if, at 
a time when the question were really in suspense, the friends 
of a policy leading toward war were obliged to come out of 
the mist of oral intercourse and private notes, and to put their 

1 March 2nd. 

* The messenger had reached Berlin on the day of the French Emperor’s 
Speech from the throne. 


Cuap. XXVII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 297 


view into a firm piece of writing. It does not follow that’such a 
document ought necessarily to be disclosed, but it ought to ex- 
ist, and ought to be official. In the summer of 1853, the draft of 
a document fairly stating the grounds of that singular policy of 
alliance within alliance, which was shadowed out in the Royal 
Speech at the close of the session, would have been a good ex- 
cuse for the members of Lord Aber deen’s Cabinet, and would 
have protected them against that sensation of ‘drifting,’ which 
was afterward described by the Foreign Secretary. Itis known 
that when the English declaration announcing the rupture with 
Russia was about to be prepared, it was found less easy than 
might be supposed to assign reasons for the war. The neces- 
Difficulty of Silty of having to state the cause of the rupture in 
framing it. g solemn and. precise form disclosed the vice of the 
policy which the Government was following, for it could not 
be concealed that the grievance which was inducing France 
and England to take up arms was one of a European kind, 
which called for redress at the hands of the four Powers rather 
than for the armed championship of the two. 

Of course the difficulty was overcome. When the faith of 
the country was pledged, and fleets and armies already moving 
to the scene of the conflict, it was not possible that war would 
be stayed for want of mere words. The Queen was advised 
to declare that by the regard due to an ally, and to an empire 
whose integrity and independence were essential to the peace 
of Europe, by the sympathies of her people for the cause of right 
against injustice, and from a desire to save Europe from the 
preponderance of a Power which had violated the faith of 
treaties, she felt called upon to take up arms, in concert with 
the Emperor of the French, for the defense of the Sultan. 

On the 11th of April the ‘Emperor of Russia issued his dee- 
TheCzar'sdec- laration of war. He declared that the summons ad- 
(ration and — dressed to him by France and England took from 
festo. Russia all possibility of yielding with honor, and 
he threw the responsibility of the war upon the Western Pow- 
ers. It was for Central and Western Europe that Diplomacy 
shaped these phrases; but in the manifesto addressed to his 
own people the Czar used loftier words. ‘ Russia,’ said he, 
‘fights not for the things of this world, but for the Faith.”! 
‘England and France have ranged themselves by the side of 
‘the enemies of Christianity against Russia fighting for the 
‘orthodox faith. But Russia will not alter her divine mission, 
‘and if enemies fall upon her frontier, we are ready to meet, 


1 23rd April. 
N 2 


*298 “TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXVIL 


‘them with the firmness which our ancestors have bequeathed 
‘tous. Are we not now the same Russian nation of whose 
‘deeds of valor the memorable events of 1812 bear witness ? 
‘May the Almighty assist us to prove this by deeds! And 
‘in this trust, taking up arms for our persecuted brethren pro- 
‘fessing the Christian faith, we will exclaim with the whole of 
* Russia with one heart, ‘*O Lord our Savior, whom haye we 
**to fear.” . “ May God arise and his enemies be dispersed !” 7! 

On the fourth day after the delivery of the message which 
The Gzar'sin- placed Russia in a state of war with France and 
om.” England, Prince Gortschakoff passed the Lower 
menced. Danube at three points; and, entering into the deso- 
late region of the Dobrudja, began the invasion of Turkey.? 

Nearly at the same time, France and England entered into 
Treaty be. 9 treaty with the Sultan, by which they engaged 
tween the Sul- to defend Turkey with their arms until the conclu- 
Western Pow- Sion of a peace guaranteeing the independence of 
roy the Ottoman Empire and the rights of the Sultan, 
and upon the close of the war to withdraw all their forces 
from the Ottoman territory. The Sultan, on his part, under- 
took to make no separate peace or armistice with Russia.? 

On the 10th of April, 1854, there was signed that treaty of 
Treaty be. ‘Alliance between France and England which many 
tween france men had suffered themselves to look upon as a se- 
and England. curity for the peace of Europe. » The high contract- 
ing parties engaged to do what lay in their power for the re- 
establishment of a peace which should secure Europe against 
the return of the existing troubles, and,in order to set free 
the Sultan’s dominions, they promised to use all the land and 
sea forces required for the purpose. They engaged to receive 
no overture tending to the cessation of hostilities, and to enter 
into no engagement with the Russian Court without having 
deliberated in common. They renounced all aim at separate 
advantages, and they declared their readiness to receive into 
their alliance any of the other Powers of Europe. 

This great alliance did not carry with it so resistless a weight 
as to be able to execute justice by its own sheer force, and 
without the shedding of blood; but it was a mighty engine 
of war. 

' 21st February. 

2 24th March. By thus passing that part of the river which incloses the 
Dobrudja, a General does not effect much. He must cross it at and above 


Rassova before he can be said, in the military sense, to have ‘broken through 
‘the line of the Danube.’ % 10th of March. 


Cuar. XXVIIL] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 299 


; CHAPTER XXVIIL. 


Tue train of causes which brought on the war has now been 
Recapitula. followed down to the end. Great armies kept on 
von. foot, and empires governed by princes without the 
counsel of statesmen, were spoken of in the outset as standing 
Sidoding elements of danger to the cause of peace, and their 
causes of dis- bearing upon the disputes of nations has been seen 
Ve anaae in all the phases of a strife which began in a quar- 
rel for a key and a trinket, and ended by embroiling Europe. 
Upon the destinies of Russia the effect of this system of mere 
Effect of per- personal government has been seen at every step. 
ore aie From head to foot a vast empire was made to throb 
Czar. with the passions which rent the bosom of the one 
man Nicholas. If for a few months he harbored ambition, the 
resources of the State were squandered in making ready for 
war. If his spirit flagged, the ambition of the State fell lame, 
and preparations ceased. If he labored under a fit of piety, 
or rather of ecclesiastical zeal, All the Russias were on the 
verge of a crusade. He chafed with rage at the thought of 
being foiled in diplomatic strife by the second Canning, and 
instantly, without hearing counsel from any living man, he 
caused his docile battalions to cross the frontier, and kindled 
a bloody war. 

Nor was the personal government of the Emperor Francis 
By the Empe- JOSeph without its share of mischief; for it seems 
ror of Austria. clear that this was’ the evil course by which Aus- 
tria was brought into measures offensive to the Sultan, but full 
of danger to herself. More than once, in the autumn of 1852; 
Nicholas and Francis J oseph came together ; ; and at these ill- 
omened meetings the youthful Kaiser , bending, i it would seem, 
under a weight of gratitude, over whelmed by the personal 
ascendency of the Czar, and touched, as he well might be, by 
the affection which Nicholas had conceived for him, was led, 
perhaps, to use language which never would have been sanc- 
tioned by a cabinet of Austrian statesmen; and, although it is 
understood that he abstained from actual promises, it is hard 
to avoid believing that the general tenor of the young Empe- 
ror’s conversations with Nicholas must have been the chief 
cause which led the Czar to imagine that he could enter upon 


300 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXVIII, 


a policy highly dangerous to Austria, and yet safely count 
upon her assent. The Czar never could have hoped that Aus- 
trian councilors of state would have willingly stood still and 
endured his seizure of the country of the Lower Danube from 
Orsova down to the Euxine; but he understood that Francis 
Joseph governed Austria, and he imagined that he could gov- 
ern Francis Joseph as though he were his own child. ‘He 
‘could reckon,’ he said, ‘upon Austria.” 

Even in Prussia the policy of the State seemed to be always 
By the King upon the poit of being shaken by the fears of the 
of Prussia. § King; and, although up to the outbreak of the war 
she was guilty of no defection,” it 1s certain that the anticipa- 
tion of finding weakness in this quarter was one of the causes 
which led the Czar into danger. | 

In France, after the events of the 2nd of December, the sys- 
By the French tem of personal government so firmly obtained that 
Emperor. the narrator, dispensed from the labor of inquiring 
what interests she had in the question of peace and war, and 
what were the thoughts of her orators, her statesmen, and her 
once illustrious writers, wag content to see what scheme of ac- ~ 
tion would best conduce to the welfare and safety of a small 
knot of men then hanging together in Paris; and when it ap- 
peared that, upon the whole, these persons would gain in safe« 
ty and comfort from the disturbance of Europe, and from a 
close understanding with England, the subsequent progress of 
the story was singularly unembarrassed by any question about 
what might be the policy demanded by the interests or the 
sentiments of France. Therefore, the bearing of personal gov- 
ernment upon the maintenance of peace was better illustrated 
by the French Government than by the Emperor Nicholas; 
for in the Czar, after all, a vast people was incarnate, THis 
ambition, his piety, his anger were, in a sense, the passions of 
the devoted millions of men of whom he was, indeed, the true 
chief. The French Emperor, on the contrary, when he chose 
to carry France into a war against Russia, was in no respect 
the champion of a national policy, nor of a national sentiment, 
and he therefore gave a vivid example of the way in which 
sheer personal government comes to bear upon the peace of 
the world. 

Perhaps, if a man were to undertake to distribute the blame 
of the war, the first Power he would arraign might be Russia. 


' Memorandum by the Emperor of Russia, delivered to the English Govy- 
ernment whi ante. 

2Tt was more than three months after the outbreak of the war that Prus- 
sia halted. : 


Car. XXVIII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 301 


Share which fer ambition, her piety, and her Church zeal were 
On RE Sn ancient causes of strife, which were kindled into a 
the War. dangerous activity by the question of the Sanctua- 
ries, and by events which seemed for a moment to show that 
the time for her favorite enterprise against Constantinople 
might now at last be coming. Until the month of March, 
1853, these causes were brought to bear directly against the 
tranquillity of Europe, and even after that time they were, in 
one sense, the parents of strife, because, though they ceased 
to have a direct action upon events, they had set other forces 
in motion. But it would be wrong to believe that, after the 
middle of March, 1853, Russia was acting in furtherance of any 
scheme of territorial aggrandizement, for it is plain that, by 
that time, the Czar’s vague ambition had dwindled down into 
a mere wish to wring from the Porte a protectorate of the 
Greek Church in Turkey. He had gathered his troops upon 
the Turkish frontier, and it seemed to him that he could use 
their presence there as a means of extorting an engagement 
which would soothe the pride of the Orthodox Church, and 
tighten the rein by which he was always seeking to make the 
Turks feel his power. The vain concealments and misrepre- 
sentations by which this effort of violent diplomacy was ac- 
companied were hardly worthy to be ranked as acts of state- 
craft, and were rather the discord produced by the clashing 
impulses of a mind in conflict with itself. 

Originally the Czar had no thought of going to war for the 
sake of obtaining this engagement, and least of all had he any 
thought of going to war with England. At first he thought 
to obtain it by surprise; and, when that attempt failed, he still 
hoped to obtain it by resolute pressure, because he reckoned 
that, if the great Powers would compare the slenderness of the 
required concession with the evils of a great war, there could 
be no question how they would choose. 

As soon as the diplomatic strife at Constantinople began to 
work, the Czar got heated by it; and when, at length, he found 
himself not only contending for his Church, but contending, 
too; with his ancient enemy, he so often lost all self-command, 
that what he did in his politic intervals was never enough to 
undo the evil which he wrought in his fits of pious zeal and 
of rage. And when, with a cruel grace, and before the eyes 
of all Europe, Lord Stratford disposed of Prince Mentschikoff, 
it must be owned that it was hard for a proud man in the 
place of the Czar to have to stand still and submit. There- 
fore, without taking counsel of any man,he resolved to occupy 
the Principalities; but he had no belief that even that grave 


302 TRANSACTIONS WHICH ~~ [Cuap. XXVIII. 


step would involve him in war, for his dangerous faith in Lord 
Aberdeen, and in the power of the English Peace Party, was 
in full force, and grew to a joyful and ruinous certainty when 
he learned that the Queen’s Prime Minister had insisted upon 
revoking the grave words which had been uttered to Baron 
Brunnow by the Secretary of State. This illusory faith in the 
peacefulness of England long continued to be his guide; and, 
from time to time, he was confirmed in his choice of the wrong 
path by the bearing of the persons who represented France, 
Austria, and Prussia at the Court of St. Petersburg; for, al- 
though in Paris, iv London, in Vienna, in Berlin, and in Con- 
stantinople, the four great Powers seemed strictly united in 
their desire to restrain the encroachments of the Czar, this 
wholesome concord was so masked at St.Petersburg by the 
demeanor of Count Mensdorf, Colonel Rochow, and M. Castel- 
bajac, that Sir Hamilton Seymour, though uttering the known 
opinion of the other three Powers as well as of his own Govy- 
ernment, was left to stand alone. } 

After his acceptance of the Vienna Note, the Emperor Nich- 
olas enjoyed for a few days the bliss of seeing all Europe united 
with him against the Turks, and he believed perhaps that 
Heaven was favoring him once more, and that now at last 
‘Canning’ was vanquished ; but in a little while the happy 
dream ceased, and he had the torment of hearing the four 
Powers confess that, if for a moment they-had differed from 
Lord Stratford, it was because of their erring nature. Then, 
fired by the Turkish declaration of war, and stung to fury by 
the hostile use of the Western fleets which the French Em- 
peror had forced upon the English Government, the Czar gave 
the fatal orders which brought about the disaster of Sinope. 
After his first exultation over the sinking of the ships and the 
slaughter, he apparently saw his error, and was become so 
moderate as to receive in a right spirit the announcement of 
the first decision that had been taken by the English Cabinet 
when the news of the catastrophe reached it. But only a few 
days later he had to hear of the grave and hostile change of 
view which had been forced upon Lord Aberdeen’s Govern- 
ment by the French Emperor, and to learn that, by resolving 
to drive the Russian flag from the Euxine, the maritime Pow- 
ers had brought their relations with his empire to a state 
barely short of war. After this rupture it was no longer pos- 
sible for him to extricate himself decorously, unless by exert- 
ing some skill and a steady command of temper. He was un- 
equal to the trial; and, although in politic and worldly mo- 
ments he must have been almost hopeless of a good result, he 


Cuar. XXVIII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. : 303 


could not bear to let go his hold of the occupied provinces un- 
der the compulsion of a public threat laid upon him by En- 
gland and France. | 

With the conduct of the Turkish Government little fault is 
Sharewhicn +0 be found. It is true that in the early stage of 
Turkey hadin the dispute about the Sanctuaries the violence of 
causing the French and the Russian Governments tormented 
the Porte into contradictory engagements, and that the anger 
kindled by these clashing promises was one of the provocatives 
of the war; but from the day of the delivery of the Bethlehem 
key and the replacement of the star, the Turkish Government 
was almost always moderate and politic. And, after the sec- 
ond week of March, 1853, it was firm, for.the panic struck by 
Prince Mentschikoff in the early days of his mission was allay- 
ed by the prudent boldness of Colonel Rose, and the Czar, with 
all his hovering forces, was never able to create a second 
alarm. ) 

It has been seen that by their tenacity of all those sovereign 
rights which were of real worth, by the wisdom with which 
they yielded wherever they could yield with honor and safety, 
by their invincible courtesy and deference toward their mighty 
assailant, and at last and above all by their warlike ardor and 
their prowess in the field, the Turks had become an example 
to Christendom, and had won the heart of England. And al- 
though it has been acknowledged that some of the more gen- 
tle of these Turkish virtues were contrived and enforced by 
the English Ambassador, still no one can fairly refuse to the 
Ottoman people the merit of appreciating and enduring this 
painful discipline. 

Besides, there was a period when it might be supposed that 
the immediate views of the Turkish Government and of the 
English Ambassador were not exactly the same; for, as soon 
as the Turkish statesmen became aware that their appeal to 
the people had kindled a spirit which was forcing them into 
war, it of course became their duty to endeavor to embroil the 
other Powers of Europe, and they labored in this direction 
with much sagacity and skill. They saw that if they could 
contrive to bring up the Admirals from Besika Bay, the West- 
ern Powers would soon get decoyed into war by their own 
fleets, and, in order to this, we saw Reshid Pasha striving 
to affect the lofty mind of Lord Stratford by shadowing out 
the ruin of the Ottoman dominion; then mounting his horse, 
going off to the French Ambassador, and so changing the ele- 
vation of his soul, whilst he rode from one Embassy to the 
other, that ia the presence of M. de la Cour he no longer spoke 


304 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cusap. XXVIII, 


of a falling empire, but pictured to him a crowd of Frenchmen 
of all ranks cruelly massacred on account of their well-known 
Christianity by a host of fanatical Moslems. And, although 
the serenity of Lord Stratford defeated the sagacious Turk 
for the time, and disappointed him in his endeayor to bring up 
more than a couple of vessels from each fleet, still, in the end, 
the Turkish statesmanship prevailed, for M. de la Cour, dis- 
turbed by the bloody prospect held out to him, communi¢ated 
his excitement to the French Emperor, and the French Empe- 
ror, as we have seen, then put so hard a pressure upon Lord 
Aberdeen as to constrain him to jom in breaking through the 
treaty of 1841; and, since this resolve led straight into the se- 
ries of naval movements which followed, and so on to the out- 
break of war, the members of the Sultan’s Cabinet had some 
right to believe that, even without the counsels of the great 
Ambassador, they knew how to govern events. 

In so far as the origin of the war was connected with Count 
Share which Leiningen’s mission, Austria is answerable ; and al- 
Austria had. ~~ though it must needs be true (for so she firmly de- 
clares') that the Czar’s reiterated account of his close under: - 
standing with her in regard to Montenegro was purely fabu- 
lous, she still remains open to the grave charge of having sent 
Count Leiningen to Constantinople armed with a long string 
of questionable claims, yet debarred by his orders from all ne- 
gotiation, and instructed to receive no answer from the Turk- 
ish Government except an answer of simple consent or simple 
refusal. This offensive method of pressing upon an independ- 
ent Sovereign was constantly referred to by the Czar as justi- 
fying and almost compelling his determination to deal with the 
Sultan in a high-handed fashion, and in this way (even upon 
the supposition of there being no pernicious understanding be- 
tween the two Emperors) Count Leiningen’s mission had an 
ill effect upon the maintenance of peace. 

Again, Austria must bear the blame of employing servants 
who, notwithstanding the firm and right part which she took 
in the negotiations, were always causing her to appear before 
Europe as a Power subservient to the Czar; and: especially 


* T have a statement to this effect. To those who have not been called 
upon to test the relative worth of statements coming from different parts of 
Europe, it may seem that I am facile in accepting this one; and the more 
so when I acknowledge, as I do, that surrounding facts give an appearance 
of probability to the opposite assertion. The truth is that, like our own coun. 
trymen, the public men of Austria are much accustomed to subordinate theit 
zeal for the public service to their self-respect. 'To undertake to disbelieve 
a statesman af the Court of Vienna is the same thing as to undertake to dis 
believe an English gentleman. 


Cuap. XXVIII. BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 305 


she ought to suffer in public repute for the baneful effect pro- 
duced at St. Petersburg by Count Mensdorf’s: shameful pres- 
ence at the thanksgivings which the Czar and his people of- 
fered up to the Almighty for the sinking of the ships and the 
slaughter of the Turks at Sinope. — 

There is also a fault of: omission for which it would seem 
that Austria is chargeable. The interests of Austria and En- 
gland, both present and remote, were so strictly the same, that 
for the welfare of both States there ought to have been going 
on between them a constant interchange of friendly counsels. 
Our statesmen are accustomed to profter advice without stint 
to foreign States, but it is remarkable that their frankness is 
not much reciprocated by words of friendly counsel from 
abroad. Yet there are times when such counsels might be 
wholesome. It would surely have been well if Austria had 
advised the English Government not to quit the safe, honest 
ground held by the four Powers for the sake of an adventure 
_with the new Bonaparte. There is no trace of any such warn- 
ings from Vienna; and indeed it would seem that Austria, tor- 
mented by the presence of the Russian forces on her southern 
frontier, was more prone to encourage than to restrain the im- 
prudence of her old ally. 

These were the faults with which Austria may fairly be 
In otherre- Charged. In other respects she was not forgetful 
ohare ier Of her duty toward herself and toward Europe ; 
duty. and it has been seen that from the day when the 
Czar crossed the Pruth down to the time when he was obliged 
to relinquish his hold, Austria persisted in taking the same 
view of the dispute as was taken by the Western Powers, and 
was never at all backward in her measures for the deliverance 
of the Principalities. 

In the nature and temperament of the King of Prussia there 
Share which Was So much of weakness that his Imperial brother- 
dauine tle in-law was accustomed to speak of him in terms of 
War. ruthless disdain; and it seems that this habit of 
looking down upon the King caused the Czar to shape his pol- 
icy simply as though Prussia were null. When he found his 
Royal brother-in-law engaged against him in an offensive and 
defensive alliance, he perhaps understood the error which he 
had committed in assuming that the policy of an enlightened 
and a high-spirited nation would be steadily subservient to the 
weakness of its Sovereign; but, until he was thus undeceived, 
or, at all events, until the failure of Baron Budberg’s mission in 
the beginning of 1854, he seems to have closed his eyes to all 

the long series of public acts in which Prussia had engagef, 


306 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XXVIII. 


and to have cheated himself into the belief that she would nev- 
er take up such a ground as might enable Austria to act freely 
on her southern frontier, and so drive him out of the Principal- 
ities. And, although until after the outbreak of the war be- 
tween Russia and the Western Powers Prussia did not at all 
hang back,! it is nevertheless true-that the Czar’s policy was 
shaped upon a knowledge of the King’s weak nature. There- 
fore the temperament and mental quality of the Prussian mon- 
arch must be reckoned among the causes of the war. 

Prussia also, in the same degree as Austria, must bear the 
kind of repute that was entailed upon her by the conduct of 
her representative; and the name of Colonel Rochow and his 
thanksgiving for the slaughter of Sinope will long be remem- 
bered ag ainst her. 

Another fault attributable to Prussia was her invincible love 
of metaphysical, or rather mere verbal refinements. When 
this form of human error is brought into polities it chills all 
human sympathies, and tends to bring a country into contempt 
by giving to its policy the bitter taste of a theory or a doc- 
trine, and so causing it to be misunderstood. An instance of 
this vice was civen by the First Minister of the Prussian ~ 
Crown in a speech of great moment which he addressed to the 
Lower Chamber on the 18th of March, 1854. After an abun- 
dance of phrases of a pacific tendency, Baron Manteuffel said 
that Prussia was resolved ‘ faithfully to aid any member of the 
‘Confederation who from his geographical position might feel 
‘himself called upon sooner than Prussia to draw the sword in 

‘defense of German interests.’ Now this, to the ear of any 
diplomatist, foreshadowed—or rather announced—an offensive 
and defensive alliance with Austria against the Czar for the 
delivery of the Principalities; and accordingly the alliance so 
announced was actually contracted by Prussia some four weeks 
afterward. But,in the minds of the common public, a disclo- 
sure couched in this diplomatic phraseology was smothered un- 
der the intolerable weight of the pacific verbiage which had 
gone before; and the result was, that a speech which an- 
nounced a measure of offense and hostility to Russia was look- 
ed upon as the disclosure of a halting, timid, and worthless 
policy. 

But, except upon the grounds here stated, there was no 
In other re- grave fault to find with the policy of Prussia down 
cnaiged hee to the outbreak of the war between the Czar and 
duty. the Western Powers. Distant as she was from 


‘The state of war began on the 19th of March. Prussia first began to 
hang back about the 21st of July. See ante. 


Cuar. XXVIII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 307 


the scene of the Czar’s encroachment, she was nevertheless 
compelled, as she valued her hold upon the good will of Ger- 
many, to be steadfast in hindering Russia from establishing 
herself in provinces which would give her the full control of 
the Lower Danube; and, up to the time of the final rupture, 
she always so accommodated her policy to the views of the 
‘Western Powers as to be able to-remain in firm accord with 
them, both as to the adjudication of the dispute between Rus- 
sia and Turkey, and as to the principles which should guide 
the belligerents in the event of their being forced into a war 
by the obstinacy of the Emperor Nicholas. 

Of course the Czar’s relinquishment of the Principalities took 
away from Prussia, as well as from Austria, her ground of 
complaint against the Czar, and with it her motive for action. 
Nor was this all; for, determining to quit the main land of Eu- 
rope and make a descent upon a remote maritime province of 
Russia, the Western Powers deprived themselves of all: right 
to expect that Austria and Prussia would favor a scheme of 
invasion which they did not and could not approve. Down 
to the time when the Czar determined to repass the Pruth, 
the policy followed by Prussia, as well as by Austria, was 
sound :nl loyal toward Europe. 

The German Confederation was brought into the same views 
As did also the #8 Austria and Prussia; and thus, so long as the 
German Gon- object in view was the deliverance of the Principal- 
federation. ities, the whole of central Europe was joined with 
the great Powers of the West in a determination to repress 
the Czar’s encroachments. I repeat that the papers laid be- 
fore the Parliament have not yet disclosed the ground on 
which the English Government became discontent with this 
vast union, and was led to contract those separate engage- 
ments with the Emperor of the French which ended by bring- 
ing on the war. 

The blame of beginning the dispute which led on to the war 
Share which Must rest with the French Government; for it is 
the French true, as our Foreign Secretary declared, that ‘the 
had in causing ‘ Ambassador of France at Constantinople was the 
Tene ‘first to disturb the status quo in which the matter 
‘rested, and without political action on the part of France 
‘the quarrels of the Churches would never have troubled the 
‘relations of friendly Powers.’! For this offense against the 
tranquillity of Europe the President of the Republic was an- 
swerable in the first instance; but it must be remembered 


1 Ubi ante, 


308 TRANSACTIONS WHICH  [Cuap. XXVIIL 


that, at the time, France was under a free Parliamentary Gov- 
ernment, and it is just therefore to acknowledge that the blame 
of sanctioning the disinterment of a forgotten treaty more than 
a hundred years old, and of violently using it as an instrument 
of disturbance, must be shared by an Assembly which had not 
enough of the statesmanlike quality to be able to denounce a 
wanton and noxious policy. It was the weakness of the gift- 
ed statesmen and orators who then adorned the Chambers 
that, like most, of their countrymen, they were too easily fas- 
cinated. by the pleasure of seeing France domineer. 

But at the close of the year 1851 the France known to Eu- 
rope and the world was bereaved of political life, and thence- 
forth her complex interests in the affairs of nations were so 
effectually overruled by the exigency of personal considera- 
tions, that in a little while she was made to adopt an Anglo- 
Turkish policy, and, as the price of this concession to the views 
of our Foreign Office, the venturers of the 2nd of December 
were brought under the sanctions of an alliance with the 
Queen of England. It has been seen that, by superseding that 
conjoint action of the four Powers which was the true safe- 
guard of peace and justice,the separate compact of the two 
became a main cause of the appeal to arms. Moreover it has 
been shown how, when once he had entangled Lord Aberdeen’s 
Government in this understanding, the French Emperor gain- 
ed so strong a hold over it that he became able to guide and 
overrule the counsels of England even in the -use to be made 
of her Mediterranean fleet; and how thenceforth, and from 
time to time, he so used the English navy as well as his’own, 
that at the moments when the negotiations seemed ripe for 
peace, they were always defeated by an order sent out to the 
Admirals. The real tendency of this perturbing and disloca- 
ting course of action was concealed by the moderation which 
characterized the French dispatches, and, in another and very 
different way, by the demeanor of the personage who repre- 
sented the French Government at St. Petersburg; so that, at 
the very times when Lord Aberdeen was brought to consent 
to a hostile and provoking use of our naval forces, he was 
able to derive fatal comfort from the language of the French 
diplomacy ; and, whenever the grave tone of Sir Hamilton Sey- 
mour was beginning to produce wholesome effect at St. Peters- 
burg, his efforts were quickly baffled by the prostrations of his 
French colleague. 

It was thus that, by generating the original dispute, by 
drawing England from the common ground of the four Pow- 
ers into a separate understanding with himself, by causing a 


Cuar. XXVIII] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 309 


persistently hostile use to be made of the fleets, and, finally, by 
his ambiguous ways of acting and speaking, the French Em- 
peror came to have a chief share in the kindling of the war. 

+ The stake which England holds in the world makes it of 
ae Sahat, deep moment to her to avert disorder among na- 
Englandhadin tions; and, on the other hand, her insular station in 
susing = Europe, joined with the possession of more than 
sufficing empire in other regions of the world, keeps her clear 
of all thought of territorial aggrandizement in this quarter of 
the globe. And, although it is the duty of all the rest of the 
great Powers as well as of England to endeavor toward the 
maintenance of peace and order, yet, inasmuch as there is no 
other great State without some sort of lurking ambition which 
may lead it into temptation, the fidelity of the Continental 
guardians of the peace can always be brought into question. 
Suspicions of this kind are often fanciful, but the fears from 
which they spring are too well founded in the nature of things 
to be safely regarded as frivolous, and the result is that the 
great island Power is the one which by the well informed 
statesmen of the Continent is looked to as the surest safeguard 
against wrong. Europe leans, Europe rests on this faith. So, 
the moment it is made to appear that for any reason England 
is disposed to abdicate, or to suspend for a while, the perform- 
ance of her European duties, that moment the wrong-doer sees 
his' opportunity and begins to stir. Those who dread him, 
missing the accustomed safeguard of England, turn whither 
they can for help, and, failing better plans of safety, they per- 
haps try hard to make terms with the spoiler. Monarchs find 
that to conspire for gain of.territory, or to have other princes 
conspiring against them, is the alternative presented to their 
choice. The system of Europe becomes decomposed, and war 
follows. Therefore, exactly in proportion as England values 
the peace of Europe, she ought to abstain from every word and 
from every sign which tends to give the wrong-doer a hope of 
her acquiescence. Unhappily,-this duty was not understood 
by the more ardent friends of peace, and they imagined that 
they would serve their cause by entreating England to abstain 
from every conflict which did not menace their own shores— 
nay, even by permitting themselves to vow and ‘declare that 
this was the policy truly loved by the English race. More- 
over, by blending their praises of peace with fierce invective 
against public men, they easily drew applause from assembled 
multitudes, and so caused the foreigner to believe that they 
really spoke the voice of a whole people, or, at all events, of 
great masses, and that England was no longer a Power which 


310 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuap. XXVIIL. 


would interfere with spoliation in Europe. The fatal effect 
which this belief produced upon the peace of Europe has been. 
shown. But the evil produced by the excesses of the Peace 
Party did not end there. It is the nature of excesses to beget, 
excesses of strange complexion; and, just as a too rigid sanc-, 
tity has always been followed by a too scandalous profligacy, 

so, by the law of reaction, the doctrines of the Peace Party 
tended to bring into violent life that keen warlike spirit which: 
soon became one of the main obstacles to the restoration of 

tranquillity. Therefore England, it must be acknowledged, 
did much to bring on the war, first by the want of moderation: 
and prudence with which she seemed to declare her attach- 

ment to the cause of peace, and afterward by the exceeding: 
eagerness with which she coveted the strife. . 

We have seen the steps by which England was brought: 
from her seeming peacefulness into a temper impatiently war- 
like; but, considering the much-avowed attachment of England: 
to the maintenance of peace, the indirect, not to say remote 
way in which the Eastern dispute came to bear upon English: 
interests, and, on the other hand, the immense concurrence of : 
opinion which sanctioned, and at last almost compelled the ap-: 
peal to arms, it is hard at first sight to understand how it came 
to happen that the cause of peace was—not merely defeated,. 
‘but—brought to ruin. The truth is, that in a free country the: 
fate of a cause must depend for the time on its leaders, and. 
if several of the foremost of these chance to stumble and fall 
disabled at nearly the same time, they leave their followers help- 
less. Now the more strenuous lovers of peace had placed their 
trust in four men; and it might seem, at first sight, that any 
political cause would at least be safe from ruin when under the, 
charge of Lord Aberdeen the Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone: 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, besides these, Mr. Cob-: 
den and Mr. Bright, two of the most gifted orators in the coun-) 
try with seats in the House of Commons. 

Loving peace, with a purity of motive and a devotedness of 
heart which no man has ever questioned, Lord Aberdeen and 
Mr. Gladstone had the misfortune to remain members of a Gov- 
ernment which went out of the safe paths of peace. They 
went wrong; and although it is true that they went wrong 
at a slow rate, still they so moved for a period of eight months, 
and at last, to their grief and dismay, they found that they had 
been leading the country into a cruel war. Deceived by the 
crude notion that France and England, acting together, could 
secure peace, they did not understand that the way to main- 
tain peace and order was ‘to hold to the alliance of the four, 


Cuar. XXVIII. ] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. 311 


Powers, and to avoid impairing it by a separate understand- 
ing with one of them. For want of this guiding principle they. 
always failed to see the point at which they could make their 
stand, and they never could choose the day on which it would 
become them to retire from office. So they lingered on in a 
Cabinet which was becoming more and more warlike, and their 
presence there was in two ways hurtful to the cause of peace, 
for even the more earnest friends of peace were quieted by see- 
ing that the trusted champions of the cause were still members 
of the Government; and at last, when they could no longer 
help seeing that this same Government was going to a rupture 
with the Czar, the more rational of them thought that there 
must really be some great State necessity for a war in which 
Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone were reluctantly engaging 
their country. Moreover, there was a great and good portion 
of the community who, retaining their theoretic disapproval 
of a needless war, were nevertheless fired with a secret longing 
for the clash of arms, and these men were relieved from the 
pain of a conflict between duty and.inclination by finding that 
for the righteousness of the impending war Lord Aberdeen 
and Mr. Gladstone were their sponsors. 

It has been seen also that by their continuance in office these 
two statesmen kept. alive in the mind of the Emperor Nicholas 
that dangerous belief which has often been a source of Euro-- 
pean troubles—the belief that England would not go to war. 
The Czar’s belief on this subject was so sweet to him that per- 
haps nothing short of the resignation of the Prime Minister 
could have undeceived him. Still, to a common observer it 
would seem that some effort might have been made to disperse 
the error which Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone had graven 
into the mind of the Czar by consenting to remain in office, and 
that, as the danger was caused in great measure by the con- 
tinuance of old impressions upon the mind of the Emperor 
Nicholas, a special mission to St. Petersburg might have been 
usefully resorted to as a means of rousing the Czar to a sense: 
of the danger which was threatening his relations with En- 
gland. Nothing of this kind was done.- Nothing was done 
to break the fatal smoothness of the incline. 

But if the cause of peace was paralyzed by the friends whom 
it had in the Cabinet, it was brought to mere extinction by the 
disqualification inflicted upon ‘its popular leaders as the result 
of their former excesses. 

Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, as we have seen, had shut them- 
selves out from the counsels of the nation. They were power- 
less. By their indiscriminate denunciations of war in general 


312 TRANSACTIONS WHICH [Cuar. XXVIII, 


they had destroyed the worth of any criticism which they might 

be able to bring to bear upon the pending dispute. Their ar- 
guments, however well pruned and shaped out to suit the oc- 
casion, were sure of being treated by an English audience as 
the offspring of their doctrines, and, their doctrines being re- 
pudiated, they could make no good use of their privilege of 
speech. It was impossible to consult with them upon the ques- 
tion whether the country was bound in honor to take up arms 
for the Sultan, because they had spent their lives in teaching 
that the country could never be bound in honor to take up arms 
for any body. Ifthey had not thus disqualified themselves for 
useful argument, they would surely have been able to make a 
becoming stand against what Count Nesselrode called ‘the 
‘most unintelligible war’ ever known. But because they had 
been extravagant before, therefore now they were null; and 
because they were null, the cause intrusted to their hands was 
brought to destruction. 

The whole Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen must share the respon- 
sibility of that ill-fated policy which brought England to cast 
aside the blessings insured by the unanimity of the four Pow- 
ers, and to enter into a separate understanding with France. - 
It is true that, because this policy was novel and adventurous, 
it was highly approved by a people glowing with warlike ar- 
dor, and seeking for fields of enterprise; but, although for the 
time an Administration may be thus borne harmless, it would 
be wrong to allow that in questions of high policy the com- 
plicity of the public has power to absolve. A Minister who 
has fashioned out a new policy leading his country into a war 
ought to be able to show—not necessarily that the policy was 
a wise one’ (for man is of an erring nature), but—that at the 
time of its adoption there were better grounds than its mere 
popularity for believing it to be right. Thatsome such grounds 
exist may be fairly imagined by those who have heard of the 
ability and the varied experience of the members of Lord Aber- 

‘deen’s Cabinet; but hitherto, so far as I know, these grounds 
have not been disclosed. . 

Again, blame attaches upon Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet for 
yielding up its own better judgment under pressure from the 
French Government, and consenting to those hostile move- 
ments of the Allied fleets which baftled the patient labors of 
diplomacy, and twice rekindled the strife. When the warlike 
spirit in England had once arisen, the French Emperor knew 
that he could at any moment subject Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet 
to an access of popular disfavor by causing or allowing it to 
appear in England that the Government of the Queen was less 


Cuap. XXVIII.] BROUGHT ON THE WAR. ; 313 


eager than himself in the defense of the Sultan; and it is true 
therefore that, although the hand which touched the lever was 
foreign, the instrument of pressure was English. It is prob- 
ably true, also, that the pressure was never inflicted without 
the consent of at least one great English Statesman. Still, be- 
cause this facile yielding to the French Emperor in the use of 
naval forces was popular, or rather was a means of avoiding 
unpopularity, the propriety of it is not the less in question. It 
is possible, however, that the hitherto unknown grounds on 
which the separate understanding with France may come to 
be defended will extend to justify the plan of deferring in na- 
val transactions to the Emperor of the French, and consenting 
at his instance to make our fleet an instrument for the disturb- 
ance of the pending negotiations. 

In so far as concerns the general policy of the Government 
in these transactions, the merits of Lord Clarendon must be 
tried, of course, by the tests applicable to the whole body of 
the Cabinet; but it has been seen that personally he was not 
blind to the danger of allowing the Czar to continue in his be- 
lief of England’s insuperable peacefulness, and that his firm, 
wholesome words were flying, as they say, to St. Petersburg,! 
when unhappily they were revoked at the instance of Lord 
Aberdeen. Lord Clarendon’s dispatches were written with so 
much of grace and vigor, and in a tone so fair and manly, that 
any one who is familiar with them will understand something 
of the process by which Lord Aberdeen was from time to time 
forced into an approval of these able writings, and in that way 
hindered from finding the happy moment in which he could 
establish his divergence from the governing member of the 
Cabinet and effect his retreat from office. 

Looking back upon the troubles which ended in the out- 
The volitios Preak of war, one sees the nations at first swaying 
which govern- backward and forward like a throng so vast as to 
edevents- be helpless, but afterward falling slowly into war- 
like array. And when one begins to search for the man or the 
men whose volition was governing the crowd, the eye falls 
upon the towering form of the Emperor Nicholas. He was not 
single-minded, and therefore his will was unstable, but it had a 
huge force; and, since he was armed with the whole authority 
of his Empire, it seemed plain that it was this man—and only 
he—who was bringing danger from the North. And at first, 


' T have avoided the obvious step by which this statement might be veri- 
fied or disproved, because it seemed to me that a question upon the subject 
would be hardly fair; and I have preferred, therefore, to. give it under cover 
of the w¢ gaowv. I do not, however, doubt that it is true. 


Vou. IL—O 


314 TRANSACTIONS, ETC. [Cuap. XXVIII. 


too, it seemed that within his range of action there was none 
who could be his equal; but in a little while the looks of men 
were turned to the Bosphorus, for thither his ancient adversa- 
ry was slowly bending his way. ‘To fit him for the encounter, 
the Englishman was clothed with little authority except what 
he could draw from the resources of his own mind and from 
the strength of his own willful nature. Yet it was presently 
seen that those who were near him fell under his dominion, 
and did as he bid them, and that the circle of deference to his 
will was always increasing around him; and soon it appeared 
that, though he moved gently, he began to have mastery over 
a foe who was*consuming his strength in mere anger. When 
he had conquered, he stood, as it were, with folded arms, and 
seemed willing to desist from strife. But also in the West 
there had been seen a knot of men possessed for the time of 
the mighty engine of the French State, and striving so to use 
it as to be able to keep their hold, and to shelter themselves 
from a cruel fate. The volitions of these men were active 
enough, because they were toiling for their lives. Their efforts 
seemed to interest and to please the lustiest man of those days, 
for he watched them from over the Channel with approving 
smile, and began to declare, in his good-humored, boisterous 
way, that so long as they should be suffered to have the han- 
dling of France, so long as they would execute for him his pol- 
icy, so long as they would take care not to deceive him, they: 
ought to be encouraged, they ought to be made use of, they 
ought to have the shelter they wanted; and, the Frenchmen 
agreeing to his conditions, he was willing to level the barrier 
—he called it perhaps false pride—which divided the Govern- 
ment of the Queen from the venturers of the second of De- 
cember. In this thought, at the moment, he stood almost 
alone; but he abided his time. At length he saw the spring 
of 1853, bringing with it grave peril to the Ottoman State. 
Then, throwing aside with a laugh some papers which belong- 
ed to the Home Office, he gave his strong shoulder to the ley-. 
eling work. Under the weight of his touch the barrier fell. 
Thenceforth the hinderances that met him were but slight. 
As he from the first had willed it, so moved the two great na- 
tions of the West. 


Cuar. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 315 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


WHEN it had been resolved that the French and the English 
Thecommana- forces already dispatched to the East should be 
ers ofthe | raised to a strength which might enable them to 
the English ar- be more than auxiliary to the defense of the Turk- 
mies. ish dominions, the French Emperor named an ofti- 
cer to the command of his army in the field, and the General 
who was to have charge of the Queen’s land forces had already 
been chosen. It seems right for me now to say something of 
these two commanders; and, the better to make each of them 
known, I am willing to speak of some of the transactions which 
brought them together between the time of their meeting in 
Paris, and the day when they received their instructions for 
the invasion of the Crimea. 

The officer intrusted with the command of the French army 
Marshal st. 10 the East was a Marshal of France, and was the 
ene: person before spoken of who had changed his name 
from Le Roy to ‘St. Arnaud,’ and from James to ‘ Achilles.’ 
He impersonated with singular exactness the idea which our 
forefathers had in their minds when they spoke of what they 
called ‘a Frenchman;’ for although (by cowing the rich, and 
by filling the poor with envy) the great French Revolution had 
thrown a lasting gloom on the national character, it left this 
one man untouched. He was bold, gay, reckless, and vain; 
but beneath the mere glitter of the surface there was a great 
capacity for administrative business, and a more than common 
willingness to take away human life. In Algerine wartare he 
had proved himself from the first an active, enterprising ofticer, 
and in later years a brisk commander. He was skilled in the 
duties of a military governor, knowing how to hold tight un- 
der martial law a conquered or a half-conquered province. The 
empire of his mind over his actions was so often interrupted 
by bodily pain and weakness, that it is hard to say whether, 
if he had been gifted with health, he would have been a firm, 
steadfast man; but he had violent energies, and a spirit so elas- 
tic, that when for any interval the pressure of misery or of 
bodily pain was lifted off, he seemed as strong and as joyous 
as though he had never been crushed. He: chose to subordi- 
nate the lives and the rights of other men to his own advance: 


316 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuapr. XXTX. 


ment. Therefore he was ruthless; but not in any other sense 
cruel. No one, as he himself said, could be more good-na- 
tured. In the interval between the grave deeds that he did, 
he danced and sung. To men in authority no less than to 
women, he paid court with flattering stanzas and songs. He 
had extraordinary activity of body, and was highly skilled in 
the performance of gymnastic feats; he played the violin; and, 
as though he were resolved in all things to be the Frenchman 
of the old time, there was once at least in his life a time of de- 
pression, when (to the astonishment of the good priest, who 
fell on his knees and thanked God as for a miracle wrought) 
he knelt down and confessed himself, seeking comfort and ab- 
solution from his Church. 

He thrice went through a career in the army. First he en- 
tered it in 1816 as a sub-lieutenant of the Royal Guard. He 
soon plunged into a course of life which was of such a kind as to 
cause him to cease from being an officer. He kept away from 
France for many years, and became acquainted with several 
languages. For a long time he was in England, and he spoke 
our language very well; but in later years he was accustomed 
to be silent in regard to the time of his exile, and there is no 
need to lift the veil which he threw over this part of his life. 

When the Revolution of 1830 broke out, he returned to 
France, and being then thirty-three years of age, he again en- 
tered the French army as a sub-lieutenant. He wrote some 
stanzas to Meunier, and gained a step by it. ‘Tell me, after 
‘that,’ said he, ‘that songs are good for nothing! His next 
enterprise was in prose.- It chanced that Bugeaud, then the 
General in command of the district, had printed a small mili- 
tary work on the camping of troops. St. Arnaud or Le Roy 
(for the time of the change of name is not certain) translated 
the book into several languages, and presented the fruit of his 
labor with, no doubt, an appropriate letter of dedication to the 
General. Bugeaud was pleased; and from that time until his 
death he never lost sight of the judicious translator. St. Ar- 
naud was immediately put upon the General’s staff, and soon 
became one of his aids-de-camp. When the Duchess of Berri 
fell a prisoner into the hands of the Government, M. St. Ar- 
naud, whose regiment was on duty at the place of her deten- 
tion, found means to make himself useful to the Government 
without incurring the dislike of his captive, and he seemed to 
be in a fair road to promotion. But again the clouds passed 
over him. 

In 1836, for the third and last time, being then near forty 
years of age, he entered the military profession. -He began 


Cuar.XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 317 


this his third career as a lieutenant in the ‘Foreign Legion,’ 
and joined the corps in Algeria. Every man of the corps, St. 
Arnaud said, had passed through a wild youth ;! but with com- 
rades of that quality a man might entertain better hopes of 
gaining renown than with a mere French regiment of the line; 
and St. Arnaud at this time made a strong resolve. He said, 
‘{ will be remarkable, or die.’ And he remained so faithful to 
this his covenant with himself, that even by acute illness he 
could not be kept out of action. When he lay upon the sick- 
bed, if it chanced that the Arabs or the Kabyles were offering 
any prospect of a fight upon ground within reach of the hospi- 
tal, he almost always managed to drag his helpless, tortured 
body toward the scene of the conflict, and this he would do, 
not with an idea of being able to take an active part, but sim- 
ply in order that the dist of officers present might not fail to_ 
comprise his name. At the storming of Constantine, however, 
he really helped to govern the event; for when a great explo- 
sion took place, and many were blown into the air, the French 
soldiers ran back with a cry that all was ruined; but Bedeau . 
and Combes, withstanding the madness of the common terror, 
strove hard to rally the crowd, and St. Arnaud, having with 
him in his company of the legion some bold, reckless outcasts 
of the North, he bethought him of the shout, very strange to 
the ears of Frenchmen, which he had heard in other climes. 
Skilled in the art of imitation, he uttered the warlike cry. In- 
stantly from the Northmen around him, whether Germans or 
Swedes, or English, Scots, Irish, or Danes, there sprang their 
native ‘ Hurrah! and with it came the thronging of men who 
must and would go forward. It was mainly the torrent of this 
new onslaught by St. Arnaud and his men of the ‘ stormy youth’ 
which carried the breach, and brought about the fall of the 
city. 

Even if for the recruiting of his health he were passing a 
few weeks of holiday in France, he would still seek personal 
distinction with a singular strength of will. If, for instance, 
there chanced to be a fire at night, he would fly to the spot, 
would scale the ladders, mount the roof, and contrive to ap- 
pear aloft in seeming peril, displayed to a wondering crowd by 
the lurid glare of the flames. Then he would disappear, and 
then suddenly he would be seen again suspended in the air, 
and passing athwart the sky that divided one roof from anoth- 
er by the help of a rope or a pole. In the early part of his 

1 «<< Jeunesse orageuse.” I translate this by the words ‘‘ wild youth ;” but 


I believe the phrase in the mouths of Frenchmen generally implies that the 
things done by the person spoken of are closely bordering upon crime. 


318 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XXIX, 


service in Algeria, his old patron, General Bugeaud, was in com- 
mand there, and was still a warm friend to him. Of course 
this circumstance helped to open a path for him, and the result 
was that, first by acts of bravery and vigor, and then by a dis- 
play of administrative ability, the all but desperate lieutenant 
of the foreign legion rose in eight years to be intrusted with 
a General’s command.! In 1845 he commanded in the valley 
of the Chelif, and he was so dire a scourge to the neighboring 
tribes that the force which obeyed his orders was called the 
‘Infernal Column.’ 

When first I saw him in that year he was moving with his 
force to wreak vengeance on a revolted tribe, and he was to 
march five weeks deep into the desert. He spoke with lumin- 
ous force, and with a charming animation; and it seemed to 
me, as we rode along by the side of the heavy-laden soldiery, 
that the clear incisive words in which he described to me the 
mechanism of the ‘movable column’ were a model of military 
diction; but his keen, handsome, eager features so kindled 
with the mere stir and pomp of war, he seemed so to love the 
swift going and coming of his aids-de- -camp, and the rolling 
drums, “and the joyful appeal of the bugles; he was so content 
with the gleam of his epaulettes, half hidden and half revealed 
by the eraceful white cabaan ; so happy in the bounding pride 
of his Arab charger, that he did not seem like a man destined 
to be chosen from out of all others as the instrument of a 
scheme requiring grave care and secrecy. Yet of secrecy he 
was most capable ; and at that very time he had upon his 
mind,? and was concealing, not from me only (for that would 
be only natural), but from every officer and man around him, 
a deed of such a kind that few men perhaps have ever done 
the like of it in secret. 

We saw that, before the December of 1851, the enterprising 
and resolute Fleury was in Algeria, seeking out a fit African 
officer who would take the post of Minister of War, with a 
view of joining the President in his plans for the overthrow of 
the Republic. Monsieur St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, had not 
so lived as to occasion any difficulty in approaching him with 
dishonoring proposals; and there was ground for inferring 
that he might prove equal to the task which was to be set be- 
fore him. The able administrator of a great district in Algeria 
might be competent to head a department. The commander 
of the ‘Infernal Column’ was not likely to be wanting in the 


1 But up to that time with the rank of Colonel only. 
2 The act here alluded to is spoken of farther on, "It took place about six 
weeks before the time when I first saw Colonel St. Arnaud, 


Cuap, XXIX.] INVASION OF 'THE CRIMEA. 319 


ruthlessness which was needed, and if his vanity made it seem 
doubtful whether he was a man who could keep a secret, there 
was a confidential paper in existence which might tend to al- 
lay the fear. 

St. Arnaud had warmly approved the destruction of life 
which had been effected in 1844 by filling with smoke the 
crowded caves of the Dahra; but he had sagaciously observed 
that the popularity of the measure in EKurope was not coex- 
tensive with the approbation which seems to have been be- 
stowed upon its author by the military authorities. These 
counter views guided M.St. Arnaud. In the summer of 1845 
he received private information that a body of Arabs had taken 
refuge in the cave of Shelas. Thither he marched a body of 
troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out and surrendered ; 
but it was known to St. Ar naud, though not to any other 
Frenchman, that five hundred men ‘remained in the cave. All 
these men Colonel St. Arnaud determined to kill, and so far he 
perhaps felt that he was only an imitator of Pelissier,’ but the 
resolve which accompanied the formation of this scheme was 
original. He determined to keep the deed secret even from 
the troops engaged in the operation. Except his brother, and 
Marshal Bugeaud, whose approval was the prize he sought for, 
no one was to know what he did. He contrived to execute 
both his purposes. ‘Then,’ he writes to his brother, ‘I had 
‘all the apertures hermetically sealed up. I made one vast 
‘sepulchre. No one went into the caverns. No one but my- 
‘self knew that under there there are five hundred brigands 
‘who will never again slaughter Frenchmen. A confidential 
‘report has told all to the Marshal without terrible poetry or 
‘imagery. Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste and. 
‘by nature. From the Sth to the 12th I have been ill, but my 
“conscience does not reproach me. I have done my duty as a 
‘commander, and to-morrow [ would do the same over again ; 
‘but I have taken a disgust to Africa.’? 

The officer who could cause French soldiery to be the un- 
conscious instruments for putting to death five hundred fugi- 
tive men, and could afterward keep concealed from the whole 
force all knowledge of what it had done, was likely to be the 
very person for whom Fleury was seeking. He was brought 
back to Paris, and made Minister of War with a view to the 
great plot of the 2nd of December. France knows how well, 


’ It is believed, however, that Pelissier left open some of the entrances to 
the cave; and that he only resorted to the smoke as a means of compelling 
the fugitives to come out and surrender. 

* St. Arnaud’s letters published by his relatives after his death. 


820 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXIX, 
sooner or later, he answered to Fleury’s best hopes. He kept 
his counsel close until the appointed night, and then (what- 
ever faltering there may have been between midnight and 
three in the morning) he was out in time for the deed, and be- 
fore the daylight came he had stabbed France through in her 
sleep. 

ee men who make a great capture, there will often 
spring up questions concerning the division of the spoil. When 
he helped to make prize of France, St. Arnaud, of course, got 
much, but his wants were vast, and he had earned a clear right 
to extort from his chief accomplice, and to go back again, and 
again, and yet again, with the terrible demand for ‘more! 
He was in such a condition of health as to be unfit to com- 
mand an army in the field; for, although during intervals he 
was free from pain and glowing with energy, he was from time 
to time utterly cast down by his recurring malady. It is pos- 
sible that, notwithstanding his bodily state, he may have sin- 
cerely longed to have the command of an army in a European 
campaign; but whether he thus longed or not, he unquestion- 
ably said that he did, and the French Emperor took him at his 
word, consenting, as was very natural, that his dangerous, in- 
satiate friend should have a command which would take him 
into the country of the lower Danube. Apparently it was 
not believed that in point of warlike skill M. St. Arnaud was 
well fitted to the command, for the French Emperor, as will 
be seen, resorted to the plan of surrounding him with men 
who were virtually empowered to guide him with their over- 
ruling counsels. 

To try to understand the relations between the allied. Gen- 
erals of France and England without knowing something of 
the repute in which Marshal St. Arnaud was held by his fellow- 
countrymen would be to go blindfold; and a narrator keeping 
silence on this subject would be hiding a fact which belongs to 
history, and a fact, too, which is one of deep moment, and 
fruitful of lessons. Paris, stripped of the weapons which kill 
the body, and robbed of her appeal to honest print, was more 
than ever pitiless with the tongue; and M. St. Arnaud being 
Jaid open by the tenor of the life that he had led, his reputa- 
tion fell a prey to cruel speech. The people of the capital 
knew of no crime too vile to be imputed to the new Marshal 
of France now intrusted with the command of her army in the 
field. Yet, so far as I know, they failed to make out that he 
had ever been convicted, or even arrested on a criminal charge ; 
and when I look at the affectionate correspondence which al- 
most through his life M.St. Arnaud seems to have maintained 


\- 


Cuap. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 321 


with his near relatives, I am led to imagine that they at least 
—and they would have been likely to know something of the 
truth—could have hardly believed his worst errors to be er- 
rors of the more dishonoring sort. Therefore there is ground 
for surmising that the Marshal was a man slandered. But in 
these times the chief defense against slanders upon public men 
is to be found in the award that results from free printing, and 
the right of free printing in France Marshal St. Arnaud, with 
his own midnight hand, had stealthily helped to destr oy. 
Whether he was a man bitterly wronged by his fellow-coun- 
trymen, or whether what he suffer ed was ‘mere justice, the 
state of his repute in the spring of 1854 is a thing lying with- 
in the reach of historical certainty. He had an ill name. 

But state policy is a shameless leveler—is a leveler of even 
that difficult steep which seems to divide the man of high hon- 
or from those of mean repute. The plotters of the 2nd of De- 
cember had overturned the social structure of France. They 
had stifled men’s minds, and had made their eloquence mute. 
They had forced those who were of high estate by character, 
or by intellect, or by birth, or by honor rable wealth, to endure 
to see France handled at. will by persons of no accoynt, and to 
submit to be governed by them, and to pay taxes into their 
hands, and to maintain them in luxury, and in all so much of 
pomp as can be copied from the splendor of kings. The new 
Emperor could not but know that he was breaking down yet 
another of the world’s barriers, and was carrying “subversion 
across the Channel when he contrived that all Europe should 
see him presenting his fellow-venturer of the December night 
to the appointed commander of an English army. 

But when he knew who the English General was to be, he 
might well give the rein to his cynic joy. He could have been 
sure that the General, placed in command of our army, would 
be an officer of unsullied name; but he who had been chosen 
was one whose life was mixed. with history—the friend, the 
companion of Wellington. It is true this Englishman was 
known to be very simple, very careless of self, a man hardly 
capable of imagining that he could be humbled by obeying the 
orders of his sovereign; and it is true, also, that the mass of 
the English people, being eager in the war, and little used to 
lay stress, as the French do, on the impersonation of a princi- 
ple, were blind to the moral import of what their Government 
was doing; but the French Emperor understood England, and 
he remembered that his coming guest was one of a great and 
powerful body of nobles, who were proud on behalf of this fa- 
vorite member of their class, and fenced him round with hon- 

| O 2 


322 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXIX. 


or. For the leveling of these heights, and for the bringing 
down of those in Europe who were tall with the pride which 
sustains man’s old strife between good and evil, no dreamer 
could dream of a solemnization more signal than the coming 
together of Marshal Le Roy St. Arnaud, and him whom old 
friends still called Lord Fitzroy Somerset. The French Em- 
peror knew that the mind of Germany and France would be 
swift to interpret this public contact, and would see in it the 
terms of a great surrender. 

I conceive that in these latter times the scale upon which 
we measure warlike prowess has been brought 
down too low by the custom of awarding wild, 
violent praise to the common performance of duty, and even 
now and then to actual misfeasance; so if I keep from this 
path, it is not because I think coldly of our army or our navy, 
but because I desire—as I am very sure our best officers do— 
that we should return to our ancient and more severe stand- 
ard of excellence. There is another reason which moves me 
in the same direction. Not only is the utterance of mere 
praise a lazy and futile method of attempting to do justice to 
worthy deeds, but it even intercepts the honest growth of a 
man’s renown by serving as a contrivance for avoiding that 
labor of narration upon which, for the most part, all lasting 
fame must rest. 

Too often the repute of a soldier who has done some heroic 
act is dealt with by a formal] report, declaring that he has been 
‘brave,’ or ‘ gallant,’ or ‘has conducted himself to the perfect 
‘satisfaction of his commanding officer” The cheap, sugared 
words are quickly forgotten, and nothing remains; whereas, 
if his countrymen were told—not of the mere conclusion that 
the man had done bravely, but—of the very deed from which 
the inference was drawn, the story, however simple, might 
dwell perhaps in their minds, and they might tell it to their 
children, and the soldier would have his fame. Now this his- 
tory will virtually embrace the whole of the short period in 
which Lord Raglan’s quality as a General was tried, and it 
seems to me, therefore, that if, in narrating what happened, I 
can reach to near the truth; if I give honest samples of what 
our General said and of what he wrote—of his manner of com- 
manding men, and his way of maintaining an alliance; if I 
show how he dealt with armies in the hour of battle, and how 
he comported himself in times of heavy trial, his true nature, 
with its strength and with its human failings, will be so far 
brought to light, that I may be dispensed from the need of 
striving to portray it; and, contenting myself with speaking 


Lord Raglan. 


Cuap. XXIX. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 323 


of some of the mere outward and visible signs which showed 
upon the surface, may leave it to his countrymen to ascend by 
the knowledge of what he did to the knowledge of what he 
was. Where I think Lord Raglan’s measures were right, I 
suppose I shall allow my belief to appear, and where I think 
they were wrong, I shall be likely to speak with an equal free- 
dom; but it is not for me, who am no soldier, to undertake to 
compute the great account between the English people and a 
General who commanded their Queen’s army in the field. 
Still, it must be remembered that the less I take upon myself 
in this regard, the graver will be the task of those who read. 
When the countrymen of Lord Raglan shall believe that they 
have in their hands sufficing means of knowledge, they will 
pass judgment—not, as I should, with the slender authority 
of a single by-stander, but with the weight of an honest nation 
in time of calm, judging firmly, yet not ungenerously, the ca- 
reer of a publie servant. 

Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterward Lord Raglan, was a young- 
er son of the fifth Duke of Beaufort and of a daughter of Ad- 
miral Boscawen. He was born in 1788. He entered the 
army in 1804. In 1807, Sir Arthur Wellesley, being about to 
depart for the expedition against Copenhagen, attached the 
young Lord Fitzroy Somerset to his staff, and during his ca- 
reer in the Peninsula he kept him closé to his side, first as his 
aid-de-camp, and then as military secretary. Between the 
time of the first restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 and the 
flight of Louis XVIII. in the spring of the following year, 
Lord Fitzroy Somerset was secretary of the embassy at Paris. 
It was during this interval of peace that he married Emily 
Wellesley, a daughter of the third Earl of Mornington and a 
niece of the Duke of Wellington. When the war was renew- 
ed he again became military secretary and aid-de-camp to the 
Duke of Wellington, and served with him in his last cam- 
paign. At Waterloo—he was riding at the time near the 
farm of La Haie Sainte—he lost his right arm from a shot. 
But he quickly gained a great facility of writing with his left 
hand; and, the war being ended, he resumed his function as 
secretary of embassy at Paris. There he remained until 1819. 
He then returned to England and became secretary to the 
Master-General of the Ordnance. In 1825 he went with the 
Duke of Wellington to St. Petersburg as secretary of em- 
bassy. In 1827 he was appointed military secretary to the 
Commander-in-Chief at the Horse-Guards, and there he re- 
mained until the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. 
After that event he was made Master-General of the Ordnance, 


324 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXIX, 


was appointed a Privy Councilor, and raised to the peerage. 
In February, 1854, he became a full General. 

Thus from his very boyhood until the autumn of 1852, Lord 
Fitzroy Somerset had passed his life under the immediate 
guidance of the Duke of Wellington. The gain was not with- 
out its drawback; for in propor rtion as the great Duke’s com- 
prehensive grasp and prodigious power of work made him in- 
dependent and self-sufficing, his subordinates were of course 
relieved from the necessity, and even shut out from the oppor- 
tunity of thinking for themselves; but still, to have been in 
the close presence and intimacy of Wellington from the very 
rising of his fame in Europe—to have toiled at the desk where 
the immortal dispatches were penned—to have ridden at his 
side, and carried his orders in all the great campaigns—and 
then, when peace returned, to have engaged in the labors of 
diplomacy and military administration under the auspices of 
the same commanding mind—all this was to have a wealth of 
experience which common times can not give. 

But for more than thirty years of his life Lord Ragin had 
been administering the current business of military offices in 
peace time, and this is a kind of experience which, if it be 
very long protracted, is far from being a good preparative for 
the command of an army in the field ; because a militar y of- 
fice, in time of peace, ts impelled by its very constitution to 
aim at uniformity; and, on the other hand, the genius of war 
abhors uniformity, and tramples upon forms and regulations. 

An armed force is a‘means to an end. The end is victory 
over enemies, and this is to be achieved partly, indeed, by a 
due use of discipline and method, but partly, also, by keeping 
alive in those who may come to have command a knowledge 
and love of war, and by cherishing that unlabeled, undocketed 
state of mind which shall enable a man to encounter the un- 
known. In England, however, and in all the great states of 
Europe, except France, the end had been so much for gotten 
in pursuit of the means, and the industry exerted in the regu- 
lation of troops in peace time had become so foreign to the 
business of war, that the more a man was military, in the nar- 
rowed sense of the ter m, the less he was likely to be fitted for 
the perturbing exigencies of a campaign. In one country, 
this singular perver rsity of busy, ‘cold, formal man,’ had been 
carried so far that an army and a war had been actually treat- 
ed as things antagonistic the one to the other; for the late 
Grand Duke Constantine of Russia once declared that he dread- 
ed a war, because he was sure it would spoil the troops, which, 
with ceaseless care and labor, he had striven to bring to per- 
fection. 


* 


Cuap. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 325 


It is to be observed also that, partly from the way in which 
our military system was framed and partly from political 
causes, the sympathy which England ought ever to have with 
her troops had been materially lessened after the first few 
years of the peace. The Duke of Wellington, dreading lest 
our forces should be dangerously reduced by the House of 
Commons, made it his policy to withdraw the army as much 
as possible from public observation. This method had tended 
still farther to dissociate the country from its armed defend- 
ers; but naturally the Duke of Wellington’s view was law, 
and it became the duty of those who were employed in the 
military administration—not to cause the country to practice 
itself heartily for the eventuality of another war, but—simply 
to maintain, as far as they could, a monotonous quiet in the 
army. For half a lifetime Lord Fitzroy Somerset was engaged 
in preventing and allaying discussion, and making the wheels 
of office run smooth. Against the baneful effect of this sort 
of experience, and against the habit of mind which it tended 
to generate, Lord Raglan had to combat with.all the fire and 
strength of his nature. 

When Lord Raglan was appointed to the command he was 
sixty-six years old. But, although there were intervals when 
a sudden relaxation of the muscles of the face used to show 
the impress of time, those moments were few ; and, in-general, 
his well-braced features, his wakeful attention, his uncommon 
swiftness of thought, his upright, manly carriage, and his easy 
seat on horseback, made him look the same as a man in the 
strong mid-season of life. 

He had one peculiarity which, although it went near to be- 
ing a foible, was likely to give smoothness to his relations with 
the French. Beyond and apart from a just contempt for mere 
display, he had a strange hatred of the outward signs and 
tokens of military energy. Versed of old in real war, he knew 
that the clatter of a General briskly galloping hither and thith- 
er with staff and orderlies did not of necessity imply any mo- 
-mentous resolve—that the aids-de-camp, swiftly shot off by a 
word like arrows from a bow, were no sure signs of dispatch 
or decisive action. And, because such outward signs might 
mean little, he shrank from them more than was right. He 
would have liked, if it had been possible, that he and his army | 
should have glided unnoticed from the banks of the Thames 
to their position in the battle-field. It was certain, therefore, 
that although a French General would be sure to find himself 
checked in any really hurtful attempt to encroach upon the 
just station of the British army, yet that if, as was not unnat- 


326 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXIX. 


ural, he should evince a desire for personal prominence, he. 
would find no rival in Lord Raglan until he reached the ene- 
my’s presence. 

‘He was gifted with a diction very apt for public faints 
and of a kind rarely found in Englishmen ; for, though it was 
so easy as to be just what men like in the intercour se of pri- 
vate friendship, it was still so constructed as to be fit for the 
ear of all the world; and whether he spoke or whether he 
wrote, whether he used the French tongue, or his own clear, 
graceful English, it seemed that there had come from him the 
very words which were the best, and no more. It was so nat- 
ural to him to be prudent in speech, that he avoided danger- 
ous utterance without seeming cautious or reserved. 

He had the subtle power ‘to draw men along with him. 
To say that he was persuasive might mean that he could ad- 
duce reasons which tended to bring men to his views. His 
was a power of another sort; for, without pressure of argu-* 
ment, his mind, by its mere impact, broke down resistance for 
the moment; ; and, although the easy graciousness of his man- 
ner quickly set people free from all awkward constraint, it did 
not so liberate men’s minds that, while they were still in his 
presence, they at all liked the duty of trying to uphold their 
OWN opinions against him. This dominion, however, was in a 
great degree dependent upon his actual personal presence ; 
for, with all the power and grace of his pen, he could not, at a 
distance, work effects proportioned to those which he wrought 
when he dealt with’ men face to face. 

It is plain that, in one respect, his empire over those who 
were in his presence was of a kind likely to become dangerous 

to him in the command of an army, because it prevented men 
from differing from him, and even made them shrink from con- 
veying to him an unwelcome truth. Indeed, after the death 
of the Duke of Wellington, the proudest Englishman, if only 
he had intellect and a little knowledge of his country’s latter 
history, had generally the grace to understand that, unless he, 
too, were a soldier who had taken his orders from the lips of 
Sir Arthur Wellesley, he could hardly be the equal of one 
whose mere presence was a record of England’s great days. 
Thence it followed that, without pretension on the one side or 
. servility on the other, men who were with him had a tendency 
to become courtiers. It was in vain that, so far as it had to 
do with their personal contentment, his manner placed men at 
their ease; there was some quality in him, or else some out- 
ward circumstance—it was partly, perhaps, the historic appeal 
of his maimed sword-arm—which was always enforcing re: 
membrance, and preventing his fusion with other men 


CuHap. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 327 


In truth, Lord Raglan’s manner was of such a kind as to be 
—not simply ornament, but—a real engine of power. It sway- 
ed events. There was no mere gloss in it. By some gift of 
imagination he divined the feelings of all sorts and conditions 
of men; and whether he talked to a statesman or a schoolboy, 
his hearer went away captive. I knew a shy, thoughtful, sens- 
itive youth, just gazetted to a regiment of the Guards, who 
had to render his visit of thanks to the military secretary at 
the Horse-Guards. He went in trepidation. He came back 
radiant with joy and wholesome confidence. Lord Fitzroy, 
instead of receiving him in solemn form and ceremony, had 
walked forward to meet him, had put his hand kindly on the 
boy’s shoulder, and had said a few words so cheering, so inter- 
esting, and so free from the vice of being commonplace, that 
the impression clung to the lad, shaping his career for years, 
and helped to make him the man he was when he was out: 
with his battalion in the winter of the first campaign. From 
the same presence the foremost statesman of the time once 
came away saying that the man in England most fitted by na- 
ture to be at the head of the Government was Lord Fitzroy 
Somerset, and he who so judged was himself a Prime Minister. 

The enemies of the Imperial Government in France had long 
Marshal st, made it a reproach against the English that they 
Arnaud and Were joining in close alliance with the midnight de- 
Mouktic, _ Stroyers of law and freedom; but when Lor d Rag- 
gether atthe lan came to Paris, when he Ww ent to the Tuileries, 
Huileries. when he was presented by the Emperor to Marshal 
St. Arnaud, the notion that such things could be was a very 
torment to those of the Parisian malcontents who chanced to 
know something of the English General: ‘You English are a 

‘robust, stirring people, and perhaps every man of you imag- 
‘ines that he covers himself with dignity and grandeur by 
‘trampling upon the feelings of the rest of mankind ; but sure- 
‘ly those men wrong you who call you a proud people. Pride 
‘causes men to stand aloof, as we do, from that which is base; 
‘and if ever again we call you haughty islanders, you may si- 
‘lence the calumny by reminding us of this 13th day of April, 
in the year of grace 1854. It was not enough that, for the 

‘sake of this silly war, you should ally yourselves body and 

‘soul to “* Monsieur de Mor ny’s Lawgiver,” and that you should 
‘suffer him to drag you down into close intercourse with per- 
‘sons whom the humblest of us here decline to know; but 
‘now—as though you really wished that your dishonor should 
*be made signal in Kurope—you send hither your General to 
‘be presented by this “ French Emperor,” as you call him, to 


328 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. X XIX, 


‘his henchman, Mr. Le Roy St. Arnaud, and the man whom you 
‘choose out for this great public sacrifice is Fitzroy Somerset, 
‘the friend and the companion in arms of your Wellington. 
‘You say that Lord Raglan cares not with whom he associates, 
‘so that he is under the orders of the Queen whom he serves, 
‘and in the performance of a public duty; but because he in 
‘the loyalty, in the high-bred simplicity of his nature, is care- 
‘less and forgetful of self, is that a reason why you should fail 
‘to be proud for him—why you should forget to be careful on 
‘his behalf? Ifthe modesty of his nature hindered him from 
‘seeing the momentous significance of his contact with the 
‘people who have got into our palaces, ought you not to have 
‘interposed to prevent him from incurring the scene of to-day ? 
‘We imagined that you knew how to honor the memory of 
‘your Wellington, and that after his death, when you looked 
‘toward Fitzroy Somerset, or spoke to him, or listened to his 
‘words, you looked, and spoke, and listened like men who re- 
‘membered. Him, nevertheless, you now offer up. To have 
‘brought you down to this is a great achievement, the realiza- 
‘tion of what they call here a ‘“ Napoleonic idea!” ‘The pris- 
‘oner of St. Helena is avenged at last. We are classic here, 
‘and we strike commemorative medals. You will soon see the 
‘honored image of your Fitzroy Somerset undergoing presen- 
‘tation at the Tuileries. Already our artists have caught some 
‘glimpses of him, and they declare it is the coloring, the glow 
‘of the complexion which makes him look so English, and that 
‘in bronze he will be grandly Roman. Those noble lineaments 
‘of his, that upright manly form, nay, even the empty sleeve 
‘which speaks to you of your day of glory, will worthily sig- 
-‘nify what England was; and then the effigy of our counter- 
‘feit Caesar receiving the homage of a stainless Englishman, 
‘and joining him hand to hand with Mr. Le Roy St. Arnaud, 
‘this will show what England is. We hear that you are well 
‘pleased with the prospect of all this, and that—far from shrink- 
‘ing—your “ virtuous middle class,” as you call it, is going into 
‘a state of coarse rapture. For shame!’ 

Lord Raglan, all unconscious of exciting this kind of sympa- 
thy in the heart of the angry Faubourg, had left England on 
the 10th of April, 1854, and on the following day both he and 
His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge were received in 
state at the Tuileries. The presence of a member of our Royal 
Family was welcome to the new Emperor. He understood its 
significance. The Parisians love to see a momentous idea so 
impersonated as to be visible to the eyes of the body, and when 
their monarch attained to be seen riding between the near 


Cuap. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 329 


kinsman of the English Queen and the appointed commander 
of her army in the field; when, on a bright spring day, he 
‘showed his guests some thirty thousand of his best troops in 
the Champ de Mars, and the scarlet of the ancient enemy 
sparkled gayly by the side of tlfe blue and the gold, the people 
seemed to accept the scene as a fitting picture of the great 
alliance of the West. Almost for the first time in the history 
of France the accustomed cheers given to the Head of the 
State were mingled with cheers for England. 

But now the time for concerted action had come; and though 
France and England were already allied by such bonds as are 
made with parchment and wax, it remained to be seen wheth- 
er the great rivals could act together in arms. The conjuncture, 
indeed, drew them toward each other; but it was certain that 
the coherence of the union would greatly depend on one man. 
It might seem that he who had first sworn to maintain the. 
French Republic, and had afterward destroyed it by stealth in 
the night time, would not be much trusted again by his fellow- 
creatures ; but the alliance rested upon ground more firm than 
the trust which one prince puts in another. It rested—not in- 
deed upon the common interests of France and England, for 
France, as we have seen, was suppressed, but—upon the pros- 
pect of personal advantage which was offered to thenew French 
Emperor by an armed and warlike alliance with England. It 
being clear that the alliance was for his good, and that, for the 
time, he had really the control of France, the only remaining 
question was whether he would pursue what was plainly for his 
own advantage with steadiness and good sense. Upon the whole 
it seemed likely that he would; for, though he was not a man 
to be stopped by scruples, he did not discard the use of loyalty 
and faithfulness where loyalty and faithfulness seemed likely 
to answer his purpose; and there was a persistency in his na- 
ture which gave ground for hoping that, unless he should be 
induced to change by some really cogent reason, his steadfast- 
ness would endure. Moreover, as we have seen, he had the 
faculty of keeping himself awake to the ‘distinction between 
the Greater and the Less; and he did not forget that for the 
time the alliance with England was the greater thing, and that 
most other objects belonged to the category of the Less. 
These qualities, supported by good humor and often by gener- 
ous impulses, went far to make him an ally with whom (so long 
as he might find it advantageous to remain in accord with us) 
it would be possible, nay, easy, and not unpleasant to act. — 

Lord Raglan submitted to the publicity and ceremonial visits 
forced upon him during the days of the 11th and 12th of April, 


330 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuapr. XXTX, 


Conference at and at one o’clock on the 13th he had a private in- 
the Tuileries. terview with the French Emperor at the Tuileries, 
The Emperor and the English General were not strangers to 
one another. ‘They. had been frequently brought together in 
London, and indeed it was by Lord Fitzroy Sorekinte that the 
heir of the first Napoleon—deeply moved by the historic sig- 
nificance of the incident—had been brought to Apsley House 
and presented to the Duke of Wellington. The Emperor 
showed Lord Raglan the draught of the instructions which he 
proposed to address to Marshal St. Arnaud. 

It may be said that at this hour Lord Raglan began to have 
upon him the weight of that anxious charge which was never 
again to be thrown off so long as life and consciousness should 
endure. He had charge on behalf of England of the great al- 
liauce of the West; and since it happened that in this, the out- 
set of his undertaking, he followed a method which character- 
ized his relations with the French from first to last, there is a 
reason for now pointing it out. It seemed to him that in the 
intercourse of two proud and sensitive nations undertaking to 
act in concert, one of the chief dangers lay in that kind of men- 
tal activity which is generated in the process of arguing. He 
made it a rule to avoid and avert all needless discussion, and 
he regarded as needless—not only those discussions which 
spring out of abstract questions, but—many also of those 
which are generated by men’s anxiety to provide for hypothet- 
ical con} unctures. He was very English in this respect, and he 
was no less English in the simple contrivance by which he 
sought to ward ‘off the evil. Whenever there seemed to be 
impending a question which he regarded as avoidable, he pre- 
vented or obstructed its discussion by interposing for consid- 
eration some practical matter which was more or less impor- 
tant in its way, but not unsafe. And now, when there was 
perhaps some fear that questions of an embarrassing and deli- 
eate kind might be raised by the pondering Emperor, Lord 
Raglan kept them aloof by engaging attention to the choice 
of the camping-ground best suited for the two armies. He 
seems to have succeeded in confining all discussion to this one 

safe and practical subject. 

When the Emperor at length brought his guest biel into 
the outer room, there were there assembled Prince Jer ome, the 
Duke of Cambridge, Marshal Vaillant the Minister of War, 
Marshal St. Arnaud, and Lord De Ros. The vital business of 
making arrangements best fitted to prevent collision between 
the armies was anxiously weighed. Marshal Vaillant, labori- 
ous, weil instructed, precise, and rather, perhaps, fatiguing in 


Cuap. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. . 331 


his tendency, to probe deep every question, strove hard to 
anticipate the eventualities likely to occasion difficulty in the 
relations of the two armies, and to force a clear understanding 
beforehand as to the way in which each question should be 
dealt with. This he endeavored to do by putting it to St. Ar- 
naud in a categorical way! to say what solution he proposed 
for each of the imagined problems; but St. Arnaud, it then ap- 
peared, was hardly more fond than Lord Raglan was of hypo- 
thetical questions, for after a little while his endurance of Vail- 
lant’s interrogatories came to an end; and he answered impa- 
tiently, and in a general way, that when the conjunctures arose, 
they would be met as best they might by the concer ted action 
of the Generals. 

The period of the great French Revolution has gathered so 
much of the mellowness of age from later events, that it seems 
like a disturbance of chronology to be bringing into the joint- 
council of France and England, in the year “1854, a brother of 
the first Napoleon. Yet Prince Jerome was one of the speak- 
ers, and he spoke with sound judgment upon the great prob- 
Jem of how France and England should act together in arms. 
He spoke, as might be expected, with less sagacity when the 
subject of ‘The Turks’ floated up into notice. The whole 
French people and many even of the people of this country 
imagine that the wisdom and power of man are tested by his 
proximity to the newest stage of civilization, and from those 
whose minds are in that state the true worth of the Osmanli, 
whether in policy or in arms, must always be hidden. If he 
sustains reverses, their minds are satisfied, because in that case 
the sum of their knowledge seems to have come right; but his 
success disturbs their most deep-set notions of logical sequence; 
and now, after all Omar Pasha’s achievements on the Danube, 
it seemed to be the impression of Prince Jerome and the French 
Marshals that the Turkish General would be a source of trou- 
ble and anxiety to the alliance. They looked upon the events 
which had been occurring as accidental and anomalous, and 
tending to produce a wrong conclusion. The Russians, as they 
well knew, had carried the industry of military preparation to 
the utmost verge of human endurance. The Turks had pro- 
vided themselves with a powerful field artillery, had kept their 
old yatagans bright, and had cherished their ancient love of 
war; but for the rest, they had trusted much in Heaven. Yet 
during some six or seven months these pious, improvident, 
warlike men had been getting the better of drilled masses. 


! The French verb ‘ poser’ would describe Marshal Vaillant’s labors. The 
English verb active ‘to pose’ would describe the effect upon the patient. 


332 . INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. (Cuap. XXIX, 


Their success seemed to carry a dangerous lesson; and the 
French Councilors thought it so important for the Turks to 
be broken in to the yoke of a newer civilization, that they even 
said it might be advantageous for Omar Pasha to undergo the 
discipline of a few wholesome reverses.! 

From all he observed in the course of these interviews, Lord 
Raglan was led to believe in the stability of the Emperor’s 
character, and the value he set upon the alliance. 

[ord Ragian’s _ ‘dfter a few days, the arrangements detaining 
departure for Lord Raglan in Paris were complete, and he took 
Mirae his departure for the East. : 

The joint occupation by French and English troops of the 
The French’ ground on the shore of the Dardanelles had yielded 
and the En- : e : : : 
glish troops on the first experience of the relations likely to subsist 
the shores of between the armies of the two nations when quar- 
nelles, tered near to each other. It quickly appeared that 
the troops of each force could be cordially good-humored in 
Cordial inter. their intercourse with those of the other. Canro- 
course between bert, Bosquet, and Sir George Brown, all destined to 
thetwoanmies. take prominent share in the coming events, made a 
kindly beginning of acquaintanceship amid the early difficulties 
and discomforts of Gallipoli; and upon the departure of Sir 
George Brown from the Dardanelles, there occurred one of 
those opportunities for the display of good feeling on which 
the French are accustomed to seize with a quickness, tact, and 
grace belonging to no other nation. Sir George Brown was 
to bring up with him to head-quarters two of the English 
regiments ; and the French—spontaneously as it appeared, and 
from a simple impulse of good-will—came down to aid in the 
embarkation. They set themselves to the work with all that 
briskness and gay energy by which the French soldiery con- 
vert an operation of mere Jabor and industry into a cheerful 
and animating scene. The incident in itself was a small one; 
but, viewed as a sign of things to come, it had greater propor- 
tions. It was accepted at the time by Lord Raglan as a hap- 
py omen—an omen which seemed to promise that the alliance 
of the West would hold good. 

But whilst the soldier was giving the best of sanctions to 
St.Amnaud’s the great Alliance, the Marshal of France was put- 
ae oh ting it in jeopardy. M.St. Arnaud had not been 
command of — long on the shores of the Bosphorus when he enter- 


the Turkish 7. 
petprn'? ed upon a tempting scheme of ambition. General 


1 Some might imagine that this hope must have been expressed in jest, 
but that is not the case. Incredible as it may seem, it is nevertheless certain 
‘that this view was gravely put forward. 


Cap. XXIX. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 333 


Bosquet, dispatched to the head-quarters at Schumla, had 
brought back accounts, which the Marshal at first could 
hardly credit, of the good state and apparent effectiveness of 
the Turkish troops, and it was then perhaps that St. Arnaud 
first thought of the step which he afterward took. He con- 
ceived the idea of obtaining the command of the whole Turk- 
ish army. The effect which this united command would have 
upon the relations between the French and the English Gen- 
eral was obvious. The English General, with his force of some 
twenty-five thousand men, had always foreseen that he was 
likely to be somewhat embarrassed in having to claim due 
consideration for a force which was less, by one half, than the 
army sent out by the French; but if Marshal St. Arnaud should 
be at the head, not only of his fifty thousand French, but of 
the whole force of Turkey, it would obviously become very 
hard, nay, even unfitting, for the English General to maintain 
an equality in council with one who, in this case, would com- 
mand altogether nearly two hundred thousand men. Marshal 
St. Arnaud pressed his demand with the Ministers of the Porte 
at Constantinople, and he seems to have imagined that he had 
obtained their assent to his demand. If indeed they did real- 
ly give a seeming assent to the proposed encroachment, they 
could hardly have meant it to take effect. They perhaps put 
their trust then, where they had put their trust before. They 
knew that Lord Stratford was at Therapia, and they might 
well believe that he would make the elaborate world go back 
into chaos before he would suffer the armies of the Caliph to 
pass like the contingent of some mere petty Christian State 
under the orders of a French Commander. 

On the 11th of May Marshal St. Arnaud called upon Lord 
Raglan, and stated in the course of conversation that the Turk- 
ish Government had determined to place Omar Pasha’s army 
under his (the Marshal’s) command; and that he was then 
going to Reschid Pasha in order to have the matter finally 
settled. Lord Raglan merely said he believed the British Am- 
bassador was not aware of the arrangement. On the 13th 
Marshal St. Arnaud sent to propose that Lord Raglan would 
meet him at Lord Stratford’s, and intimated that he had an 
important communication to make. It was arranged that the 
English Ambassador should receive the Marshal alone, ‘in or- 
‘der,’ as Lord Stratford almost cruelly expressed it, ‘in order 
‘to make his acquaintance,’ and that afterward Lord Raglan 
should join them. 

It jars upon one’s love of fair strife to see Marshal St. Ar- 
naud brought in cold blood into the presence of the two men 


334 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. X XIX, 


St. Arnaud in. Whom he ventured to encounter—into the presence 
the presence of of Lord Stratford, prepared and calmed by his fore- 
ord Stratford 

and Lord Rag- knowledge of the intrigue; and of Lord Raglan, 
an, roused by his sense of the danger which threatened 
the alliance. But the interview took place. The Marshal went 
to the English embassy, and the operation of ‘making his ac- 
‘quaintance’ was carried into full effect. Imagination may see 
the process—may see the light, agile Frenchman coming gayly 
into the room, content with himself, content with all the world, 
and charmed at first with the sea-blue depth of the eyes that 
lightened upon him from under the shadow of the Canning 
brow; but presently beginning to understand the thin, tight, 
merciless lips of his host, and then finding himself cowed and 
pressed down by the majesty and the graciousness of the wel- 
come. For the welcome was such as the great Eltchi would 
be sure to give to one who (for imperative reasons of State) 
was to be treated as his honored guest, but who was also a 
vain mortal, pretending to the command of the Ottoman army, 
and daring to come with his plot avowed into the very pres- 
ence of an English ambassador. Afterward Lord Raglan came 
into the room, and then the Marshal began upon the business 
in hand. He said he had required, and the Turkish Govern- 
ment had consented, that Omar Pasha should be placed under 
his orders; that a brigade of Turkish infantry and a battery 
of artillery should be incorporated into each of the French 
divisions; that fifteen hundred Bashi-Bazouks should be dis- 
mounted, that their horses should be turned over. to the French 
troopers, and that the Bashi-Bazouks should be paid (it was 
not said by whom), and then be sent back to their homes. 

If this proposal had been then for the first time made known 
to Lord Stratford, his fiery nature would scarcely perhaps have 
suffered him to hear with temper; but he had been prepared 
by Lord Raglan for what was coming, and he seemed all calm 
and gentleness. After hearing the proposal with benign at- 
tention, he quietly asked the Marshal whether he had cogni- 
zance of the tripartite treaty ; and then turning to a copy of the 
treaty which happened—not at all by chance—to be lying 
within his reach, he read aloud the fourth article: an article 
which proceeds upon the assumption that the three armies 
would be under the orders of distinct commanders. The Mar- 
shal—ready perhaps to encounter the more obvious arguments 
against the expediency of the plan—was scarcely prepared for 
this quiet reference to the terms of the treaty. Lord Raglan 
then said that he thought a good deal of inconvenience might 
result from the adoption of the Marshal’s plan—that Omar 


Cuar. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 335 


Pasha was the ablest of the Turkish generals, that his services 
had been recognized by the grant of the rank of Generalissimo, 
and the title of Highness, and that to deprive him of the supe- 
rior command, and to dismember his army at a moment when 
it was in presence of the enemy, would not only lower him in. 
the estimation of those who looked up to him with confidence, 
but would probably induce him to throw up his charge in dis- 
gust, and declare that he would not suffer himself to be de- 
graded. 

But both Lord Raglan and the English Ambassador were 
gifted with the power which is one of the most keen and grace- 
ful of all the accomplishments of the diplomatist—the power 
of affecting the hearer’ with an apprehension of what remains 
unsaid. It is a power which exerts great sway over human 
actions; for men are more cogently governed by what they 
are forced to imagine than by what they are allowed to know. - 
‘The Marshal,’ Lord Raglan wrote, ‘saw that our opinions 
‘were stronger than our expression of them.’ He gave way. 
He immediately declared that, far from wishing to diminish 
the consequence of Omar Pasha, he was anxious to add to it, 
to uphold him to the utmost, and to increase his importance ; 
and he added that he saw the propriety of deciding nothing 
until after a conference with Omar Pasha. By the time that 
St. Arnaud passed out of the Embassy gate, his enterprise was 
virtually abandoned. 

Some good, perhaps, resulted from the attempt to bring the 
His écheme de- Ottoman army under French command. Of all the 
spated. faults tending to impair the value of Lord Raglan’s 
advice to the home Government, there was none more grave 
than his want of power to appreciate warlike people belonging 
to an earlier state of civilization than that to which he had 
been accustomed in his latter years; and although nothing 
could ever soften his antipathy toward Turkish Irregulars of 
all kinds, and especially to the Bashi-Bazouks, he was by this 
incident drawn more than ever toward the Turkish Generalis- 
simo, and he always thenceforth did his best to defeat any plan 
which tended to narrow the sphere of the Pasha’s authority. 

So great was the elasticity of Marshal St. Arnaud’s mind, 
His scheme for that, far from remaining cast down under the dis- 
cpauaning ° ~comfiture which he had undergone, he very soon 
English troops. entered upon a scheme yet more ambitious than the 
frst. It seems he had become possessed with the idea that 
great achievements were within his reach, if only he could add 
to the powers which he already wielded the occasional com- 
mand. of English troops. He proposed that when French and 


% 


336 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXIX, 


English troops were acting together, the senior officer, whether 
he chanced to be French or English, should take the command 
of the joint force; and although this proposal was so expressed 
that it might be regarded as applying only to the command of 
detachments, it was surmised that (M. St. Arnaud’s military 
rank being higher than that of Lord Raglan) the control of the 
whole British force was the object really in view. 

The experience of the conference at the British embassy had 
proved the good sedative effect of a dry document; and as the 
instructions addressed to the English General chanced to con- 
tain some words directing him to take no orders except from 
the Secretary of State,! the clause was happily put forward by 
Lord Raglan as an impediment to the proposed plan. Mar- 
This also de- Shal St. Arnaud gave way, and thenceforth desisted 
denied. from all farther prosecution of his scheme. 

So skillful was the resistance opposed to these enterprises 
of M.St. Arnaud, and the character of the Marshal was so free 
from all admixture of spite and bitterness, that their frustra- 
tion did not create ill feeling. It was plain, however, that re- 
Attemptsof currence to projects of this sort would be danger- 
this Kind ne OUS to the alliance; and when the French Emperor 
French Empe- knew that these schemes had been tried and defeat- 
be ed, he forbade all attempts to revive them. 

Hitherto, the cause which had been threatening the cohesion 
st.Arnua Of the alliance was M. St. Arnaud’s ambition. The 
suddenly de- next obstruction which Lord Raglan had to deal 
nye Care with was one of a very different kind. Checked, 
Mand the seatiyigs is supposed, by the authoritative counsels sent 

is out to him from Paris, Marshal St. Arnaud suddenly 
announced that, for some time to come, the French army could 
not be suffered to move toward the seat of the war. 

The measures for sending up the British forces to Varna 
were in progress; and the Light Division had been already 
dispatched, when, at eleven o’clock at night, Colonel Trochu 
presented himself at the British head-quarters, and requested 
an immediate interview with Lord Raglan. The name of Col- 
onel Trochu will recur in this narrative, for he was an officer 
of great weight in the councils of the French army. He had 
come from France so lately as the 10th of May, and, although 
his nominal office was simply that of first aid-de-camp to Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud, it was known that he came out fully charged 
with the notions and the wishes of the French Emperor. Col- 

? The clause, I imagine, had been introduced in order to negative the sup- 


position that the Ambassador at Constantinople was to have the control of 
the military operations. 


Cuap. XXIX. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 337 


onel 'T'rochu was a cautious, thinking man, well versed in strat- 
egic science, and it was surmised that it was part of his mis- 
sion to check any thing like wildness in the movements of the 
French Marshal.! He stated that he had been sent by Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud to request that Lord Raglan would postpone 
any farther movement toward Varna until the Marshal should 
have an opportunity of satisfying himself that any considerable 
portion of the French army was in a condition to take the field. 

Up to this moment, no doubt had been entertained of the 
forwardness of the French preparations; and Lord Raglan, 
much astonished, expressed strong objection to the proposed 
delay. ) 

Colonel Trochu replied that, upon his arrival in the Levant, 
he had gone to Gallipoli in order to see what degree of for- 
wardness the preparations of the French army had really at- 
tained; and he had come, he said, to the conclusion that the 
French army was not as yet so equipped and provided as to 
render it practicable, with any thing like common prudence, to 
attempt operations against the enemy. He went on to justify 
his conclusion by details, showing the deficiencies under which 
the French army labored; he said that he had communicated 
the result of his inspection, and the opinion which he had form- 
ed to Marshal St. Arnaud, and that Marshal St. Arnaud, en- 
tirely adopting that opinion, had sent him to the English head- 
quarters in order that he might prevail upon Lord Raglan to 
suspend the intended movement. 

_Lord Raglan observed that great inconvenience would re- 
Lord Raglan's sult from the proposed suspension of the move- 
disapproval of 5 ; : i 
the proposed Ment; that the movement was one ‘actually pro- 
delay. posed by the French and English commanders to 
Omar Pasha, and by him, as well as by the Turkish ministers, 
entirely approved ; and that thus the French and the English 
commanders stood pledged to Omar Pasha and to the Porte, 
at a moment too when much anxiety existed for the fate of 
Silistria. Colonel Trochu admitted all this; but he again urged 
the necessity for delay. 

The interview lasted till an hour after midnight, and Col- 
onel Trochu’s request was followed up on the ensuing day by 
written communications from the French Marshal. But the 
importance of these discussions was superseded by a farther 
and more perilous change in the French counsels. 

At seven o’clock in the morning of Sunday, the 4th of June, 
Marshal St. Arnaud called upon Lord Raglan, and announced 


1 Modérer la fougue de M. le Marechal. 
Vote 


338 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA™ [Cuar. XXIX. 


St.Amaud’s that he had determined upon an entirely new plan 
prio thts of operations for his army. Instead of moving his 
take upade- force to Varna, as had been agreed, he had resolved, 


way rear of he said, to send there only one division, and to place 
the Balkan. qj the rest of his army in position—not in advance, 
but in rear of the Balkan range. He was to have his right 
resting on the sea at Bourgas. His head-quarters were to be 
at Aidos, and he hoped, he said, to be able to establish himself 
there by the third week of June. He invited Lord Raglan to 
conform to this plan, and to take up a position at Bournabat, a 
part of the proposed position which was the most remote from 
the sea. . 

Thus, at a time when the eyes of all Europe were upon Silis- 
tria and the campaign on the Danube, it was proposed that the 
armies of the Western Powers should take up a mere defensive 
—a timidly defensive—position, placing all Bulgaria, a part of 
Roumelia, and the whole range of the Balkan between them 
and the scene of conflict! What made the matter still more 
grave was this: that Marshal St. Arnaud did not come to con- 
sult. He had already adopted this almost incredible plan, and 
his troops were then actually in march for the new position. 

It might now indeed seem that those were right who had 
Lord Raglan's deemed the great alliance of the West to be im- 
determined practicable. For all the purposes of the campaign 
plan. the proposed plan would have caused the armies of 
the two Western Powers to become simply null. Lord Rag- 
lan at once declared his entire disapproval of it. 

Tied perhaps to this singular plan by the counsels which 
Trochu had brought him, Marshal St. Arnaud, for the time, 
did not yield. But the English General, as I have already 
said, had a quality which made it difficult and painful for men 
to maintain a difference with him whilst they were in his pres- 
ence. St. Arnaud was under this stress; and, as though lie 
shrank from the ascendency of Lord Raglan, and sought a res- 
pite from the effort of having to oppose him in oral discussion, 
he imagined the idea of bending over a table and writing down 
what he had to say. This he did; and when the writing was 
finished, he left it with Lord Raglan. But the Marshal seems 
to have inwardly determined that Colonel Trochu, who had 
probably suggested this new plan of campaign, should himself 
be made to bear the pain of farther sustaining it; for he took. 
his leave, saying that the Colonel should be sent to Lord Rag- 
Jan-on the following day. agit 

In this curious paper, written by St. Arnaud in Lord Rag- 
lan’s presence, the Marshal said the great advantage of the 


Cuap. XXIX.] - INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 339 


French and English having only one division each at Varna, 
would be that they would not get entangled prematurely in 
hostile operations, for with such a small force no one could 
taunt the Western Powers for not marching to relieve Silistria, 
or for not giving battle to the Russians; whereas, argued the 
Marshal, if the Allies were present in greater strength, it was 
to be feared that they might suffer themselves to be carried 
away by the Turks. ‘It is important,’ said the Marshal, ‘ not to 
‘give battle to the Russians except with all possible chances | 
‘of success, and the certainty of obtaining great results.’ 
Then, after describing the supposed advantages of his intended 
position in rear of the Balkan, the Marshal reverted to his dread 
of being carried forward by the warlike Turks. ‘We must 
‘not,’ said he, ‘lose sight of this; that we are here to aid the 
‘'Turks—to succor them, to save them; but not by following 
‘their plans and their ideas, It is evident that Omar Pasha 
‘has no other idea but that of drawing on the allied army to 
‘give battle to the Russians and to relieve Silistria. The safe- 
‘ty of Turkey is not in Silistria; and it is necessary to aid and 
‘succor the Turks in our own way.’ 

No one perhaps will now defend a plan of campaign which 
was to place the allied armies of the Western Powers in a po- 
Sition some hundreds of miles from the scene of any conflict, 
and to withdraw them from the very proximity of the Turk be- 
cause of his warlike counsels. Still, such justice as is due must 
be rendered to the French strategists. France and England 
had sent to the East that portion of the two armies which con- 
sists of combatants; but neither of the Western Powers had 
hitherto constituted on the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus that 
vast accumulation of stores, of munitions of war, and means 
of transport which would enable it to live, to move freely, and 
to fight. Both of the two armies had the most of what for the 
moment they needed, but neither of them had hitherto any 
sufficing base of operations to rest upon. Both of the armies 
had means of subsistence for the next few days, and were so 
equipped as to be able to fight a battle on the beach; but nei- 
ther army had, nor could have for many months, those vast 
warehouses of stores, and those immense means of land-trans- 
port, which could alone sustain regular and extended opera- 
tions in the field. Therefore, if purely military rules were to 
govern, and if Russia were really the formidable invader of 
Turkey which the world had believed her to be, there would 
_ have been some rashness in pushing forward the combatants 
of the two armies toward the scene of conflict with a knowl- 
edge that for some time to come they would be unable to move 
freely in the field. 


340 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XXIX) 


The true ground for overruling the hesitation of the French 
strategists lay in the now obvious fact that (to say nothing of 
the armies of France and England assembled on the Bospho- 
rus with vast means of sea transport at their command) Rus- 
sia, ill prepared for a great war in the South, driven out of the 
Euxine, threatened by Austria, and fiercely encountered and 
hitherto repulsed by the Ottoman forces, was not so formida- 
ble an invader of European Turkey as to deserve that her de- 
spairing struggles in the country of the Lower Danube should 
be encountered with all the resources of strategic prudence. 
Besides, the question was not purely a military one. It was 
certain that the mere presence of the French and the English 
forces in the neighborhood of the conflict would have a moral 
weight more than proportioned to their actual readiness for 
offensive operations. Finally, the question had been settled. 
The allied Generals, in their conference with Omar Pasha, had 
engaged to move their troops to Varna, and the honor of 
France and England stood pledged. 

But if there was a semblance of military wisdom in the hesi- 
tation of the French to move up to Varna, there was none in 
their plan for the defensive line behind the Balkan at Aidos ; 
for, if the want of means of land-transpert threatened to ham- 
per the force even in the advanced position of Varna, it is ob- 
vious that the same cause would have reduced the French and 
English forces to sheer uselessness if they had taken up a po- 
Sition at so vast a distance as Aidos is from the scene of the 
conflict. Ifthe plan had been followed, no French nor. En- 
glish troops in that year would have seen the shape of a Rus- 
sian battalion. Yet Marshal St. Arnaud, so far as concerned 
France, had determined thus to forfeit all military significance 
in the pending campaign, and had done so, and had begun to 
carry the plan into execution without consulting his English 
colleague. 

How France was sav ‘ed from this humilhation, and how the 
great alliance was preserved, will now be seen. 

On the day following the interview with Marshal St. Ar- 

naud, Colonel Trochu came, as had been agreed, to Lord Rag- 
lan’s quarters. After repeating what Marshal St. Arnaud had 
stated the day before, namely, that Bosquet’s Division was al- 
ready in march for Adrianople, the Colonel. pressed the ad- 
vantages of the position which Marshal St. Arnaud had pro- 
posed to take up in rear of the Balkan. 
Wont Rovian Lord Raglan heard all, and then simply request- 
spinor toplaes ed Colonel Trochu to inform Marshal St. Arnaud 
army benind that he, Lord Raglan, objected to place any portion 
the Balkap- of Her Majesty’s army in Roumelia. 


Cuar. XXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 341 


Lord Raglan added that the movement which seemed to 
him the best was to advance to the front with a view to join 
Omar Pasha in an effort to relieve Silistria; and he said that 
if the Marshal were not prepared for such a movement, he 
(Lord Raglan) would keep his divisions on the Asiatic side of 
the Bosphorus, and hold them ready to embark at any moment 
for Varna. 

Firmness conquered. On the morning of the 10th of June, 
St Amana  COlonel Rose came to the English head-quarters 
gives way, and announced that Marshal St. Arnaud now con- 
abandons his sented to abandon his plan of taking up a defensive 


plan of a posi- » 3 - 
tion behindthe position behind the Balkan, and that, reverting to 


Cui the original determination of the Allies, he would 
move his army assemble his army at Varna. 
to Varna. 2 

Thus the danger passed. Secrecy, it would ap- 
pear, had been well maintained, and the world did not know 
that for all purposes of concerted military operations, the alli- 
ance of the Western Powers had lain in abeyance for five days. 

Leaving small detachments at Gallipoli, the French and the 
Thearmies “nglish armies were now moved up to Varna. 
moved accord- General Bosquet’s Division, however, was made to 
EY feel the consequences of the resolution adopted by 
the French strategists ; for, this division having actually com- 
menced its march toward Adrianople in furtherance of the then 
intended plan of taking up a position behind the Balkan, Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud, it seems, did not like to issue a countermand 
which would have disclosed to a sagacious soldiery his double 
change of counsels-——nay, perhaps might have given them a 
glimpse of the almost ridiculous destiny from which they had 
Bosquet’sover- Deen saved by Lord Raglan. So, whilst all the 
Jand march. yest of the allied forces were gliding up to Varna 
by water, Bosquet’s Division continued to follaw the direction 
first given it, and was brought into Bulgaria by long, painful 
marches. If the warlike Zouaves, composing part of the di- 
vision, had known that their long, toilsome movement in the 
midst of the great summer heats was the result of a plan for 
placing the French army in position at a distance of several 
hundreds of miles from the enemy, they would have solaced 
the labors of the march by tearing the repute of the schemer 
who contrived it, and making him the butt for their wit. 

It is obvious that the premature disclosure either of Marshal 
the way'in St. Arnaud’s ambitious scheme, or of his faltering 
which St.Ar- counsels, would have been fraught with danger to 
sees. the alliance; and since it used to happen in those 
caped public: days that tidings freshly intrusted to the English 
ba Cabinet were often disclosed to the world, it seems 


342 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. (Cuap. XXX, 


useful to show how it was that Lord Raglan was able to 
screen these transactions of Marshal St. Arnaud from the in- 
quiring eye of the public. Apparently he did this by being 
careful in the choice of the time for making disclosures.to the 
authorities at home. Except when there was a good reason 
for taking a contrary course, he liked to delay the communica- 
tion of affairs involving danger until the danger was past. 
Thus, for instance, he would describe the beginning of an in- 
trigue and also its final defeat at the same time; and the re- 
sult was, that the end of the dispatch not .only made the dis- 
closure of the earlier part of it comparatively harmless, but 
even destroyed its value as an article of ‘news ;’ for in propor- 
tion as people were greedy for fresh tidings, they were careless 
of things which ranged with the past, and the time was so 
stirring that the tale of an abandoned plan of campaign, or an 
intrigue already baffled and extinct, was hardly a rich enough 
gift for a Minister to carry to a newsman. 

Thus were averted the early dangers which threatened the 
alliance ; and thus, after resolving to take up a position some 
hundreds of miles distant from the nearest Russian outpost, 
the French Marshal gave way at last to Lord Raglan’s ascend- 
ant, and was soon pushed forward to a camping-ground within 
hearing of the enemy’s guns. 3 


CHAPTER XXX. 


Tue closing events of the summer campaign in Bulgaria did 
Tidines which SO Much to kindle that zeal which forced on the in- 
kindled in En- vasion of the Crimea, that it seems right to speak 
eel of them here; not with any notion of putting into 
sion ofthe the set form of “ History” things which all Europe 
a knew at the time in the most authentic way, but 
rather for the purpose of showing how the armies at Varna, 
and the statesmen and the people in England, were touched, 
were stirred, nay, were governed by the tidings which came 
from the Danube. Prince Paskievitch stood charged to exe- 
cute with his own hand the plan of campaign which his Sover- 
eign had persuaded him to design,' and accordingly, in the 
summer of the year 1854, he found himself marching on the 
Danube at the head of the Russian army, then engaged in at- 


' See ante, p. 255. 


- 


Cuap. XXX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 348 


tempting an invasion of the Ottoman Empire. He had insist- 
ed, as we have seen, that as the needful condition of a prosper- 
Siege of Silis. OUS Campaign, Silistria must fall by the 1st of May.! 
iia. It was not before the middle of the month that he 
was able to appear before the place; but thenceforth he lost 
no time, and on the 19th he opened his first parallel. 

The new defenses of the fortress had been planned by Col- 
onel Grach, a Prussian officer in the service of the Porte. He 
had brought to the work a great deal of knowledge and judg- 
ment. He was still in the place, and he continued to lend the 
aid of his science to the garrison whenever he could do so 
without going out of his dwelling-house; but, adhering, it 
seems, to the bare terms on which he had engaged his services, 
he stiflly abstained from taking any other than a scientitic part 
in the struggle. 

Prince Paskievitch pressed the siege with a vehemence which 
seemed to disdain all economy of the lives of his soldiery, and, 
the place being weakly garrisoned, and seemingly abandoned 
to its fate, its ‘fall was supposed to be nigh. To uphold the 
Sultan’s cause three armies were at hand, “but no one of them 
was moved forward with a view to relieve the place. Omar 
Pasha, shrewd and wary, was gathering the strength of the 
Ottoman Empire at Schumla, and it did not enter into his plan 
of campaign to smooth the path of the Russian General by: 
going forward in strength to give him a meeting under the 
guns of the beleaguered fortress. On the other hand, France 
and England were rapidly assembling their forces in the neigh- 
borhood of Varna, but for want of sufficing means of land-trans- 
port they were not yet in a condition to take the field. 

Day. by day the two armies at Varna were moved by fitful 
tidings of a‘conflict in which, though it raged within ear-shot, 
they were suffered to take no part. At first, few men har- 
bored the thought that—without deliverance br ought by a re- 
lieving foree—a humble Turkish fortress would be able to hold 
ont against the collected strength of Russia and the most re- 
nowned of her Generals. Soon it was known that, of their own 
free will and humors, two young Englishmen, Captain Butler, 
of the Ceylon Rifles, and Lieutenant Nasmyth, of the East In- 
dia Company’s Service, had thrown themselves into the place, 
and were exercising a strange mastery over the garrison. On 
one of the hills overlooking the town there was a seam of earth 
which—as though it were a kind of low fence designed and 
thrown up by a peasant—passed along three sides of the slope 


* See ante, p. 256. 


344 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXX. 


in a doubtful, meandering course. This was the earthwork 
which soon became famous in Europe. It was called the Arab 
Tabia. The work was one of a slight and rude sort; but the 
ground it stood on was judged to be needful to the besiegers, 
and, at almost any cost of life to his people, Prince Paskievitch 
resolved to seize it. By diligent fighting on the hill-side, by 
sapping close up to the ditch, by springing mines which more 
than once blew in the counterscarp and leveled the parapet, 
by storming it in the daytime, by storming it at night, the 
Russians strove hard to carry the work; but when they sprang 
amine, they ever found that behind the ruins the Turks stood 
intrenched; and whether they stormed it by day or by night, 
their masses of columns were always met fiercely, were always 
driven back with a cruel slaughter. Prince Paskievitch, the 
General commanding in chief, and General Schilders, who com- 
manded the siege works, were both struck down by shot and 
disabled. On the side of the Turks, Mussa Pasha, who com- 
manded the garrison, was killed; but Butler and Nasmyth, 
now obeyed with a touching affect:un and trustfulness by the 
Ottoman soldiery, were equal to the historic occasion which 
they had had the fortune and the spirit to seize. At one time 
they were laying down some new work of defense. At an- 
other, the two firm lads were governing the judgment of the 
Turkish commanders in a council of war. Sometimes, with ear 
pressed to the earth, they were listening for the dull blows of 
the enemy’s underground pickaxes. Now and then they were 
engaged in dragging to his place under fire some unworthy 
Turkish commander; and once, in their sportive and English 
way, they were busy in getting together a sweepstakes, to be 
won by him who should name the day when Silistria would be 
relieved; but always when danger gathered in the Arab Tabia, 
the grateful Turks looked and saw that their young English 
guests were amongst them, ever ready with counsel for the 
new emergency, forbidding all thought of surrender, and even, 
it seems, determined to lay rough hands on the, General who 
sought to withdraw with his troops from the famous earth- 
work.! It seemed that the presence of these youths was all 
that was needed for making of the Moslem hordes a faithful, 
heroic, and devoted soldiery. Upon ground known to be mined 
they stood as tranquilly as upon any other hill-side. ‘It was 
‘impossible,’ said Nasmyth’s successor in the Arab Tabia— it 


1 [ take it that this is what was meant by Nasmyth’s expression, ‘‘pecul- 
‘iar inducement.” The man upon whom the ‘‘ peculiar inducement” was 
brought to bear was one whom Butler had dragged out bodily from his hid- 
ing-place. 


Cuar. XXX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 345 


“was impossible not to admire the cool indifference of the Turks 
‘to danger. Three men were shot in the space of five minutes 
‘while throwing up earth for the new parapet, at which only 
‘two men could work at a time so as to be at all protected ; 
‘and they were succeeded by the nearest by-stander, who took 
‘the spade from the dying man’s hands and set to work as 
‘calmly as if he were going to cut a ditch by the roadside.’ 
Indeed, the childlike trust which these men were able to put 
in their young English leaders so freed them from all doubt 
and question concerning the wisdom of the orders given, that 
they joyfully abandoned themselves to the rapture of fighting 
for religion, and grew so enamored of death—so enamored of 
the very blackness of the grave, that sometimes in the pauses 
of the fight a pious Mussulman, intent on close fighting and 
blissful thoughts of Paradise, w ould come up with a pickaxe 
in hand, would speak some touching words of devotion and 
eratitude to Butler and Nasmyth, ‘and then proudly fall to 
work and dig for himself the last home, where he .charged his 
comrades to lay him as soon as he attained to die. 

Omar Pasha not choosing to march to the relief of Silistria, 
but being unwilling to leave its defenders to sheer despair, 
sent General Cannon! (Behram Pasha he was called in the 
Turkish army) with a brigade of irregular light infantry, and 
instructed him to occupy some of the wooded ground in the 
neighborhood of the place, with a view to trouble the enemy 
-and to encourage the garrison. General Cannon, however, 
learned on reaching the neighborhood of Silistria that the hopes 
of the garrison had already ebbed very low; and therefore, 
though without the warrant of orders, he resolved to throw 
himself into the place with his whole brigade. This, by means 
of a stratagem and a long, circuitous night-march, he was able 
to do. His achievement, as was natural, gave joy to the gar- 
rison; and turning to account the enthusiasm of the moment, 
he administer ed, as is said, a direful oath to the. Pasha in com- 
mand—an oath ‘whereby the Turk swore that, happen what 
might, he would never surrender the place. 

It was whilst General Cannon was in Silistria that Captain 
Butler received the wound of which he afterward died. The 
Russians had sapped up so close to the ditch that, if a man be- 
hind the parapet spoke much above a whisper, the sound of 
his voice used to draw the enemy’s fire toward the nearest 
loophole or embrasure. Captain Butler, it seems, with a view 


' General Cannon was an officer of our Indian army who had served with 
distinction in India, and in the force (the British Legion) which operated in 
Spain under the or ders of General Evans. 


iP 


346 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuar, XXX 


to throw up a new work of defense, was reconnoitring the en- 
emy’s approaches through an aperture made in the parapet, 
and in consulting about his plan with General Cannon, he spoke 
loud enough to be heard by a Russian marksman, for the sound 
of his voice brought a rifle ball in through the loophole and 
struck him the blow from which (being weakened by toil and 
privation) he died before the end of the siege. 

For some reason which he deemed to be imperative—strin- 
gent orders, perhaps, from Schumla—General Cannon marched 
out of the place with his brigade on the 17th of June, and at 
his request Nasmyth also went away for a time, in order to 
confer with Omar Pasha at the Turkish head-quarters; but 
meanwhile, Lieutenant Ballard, of the Indian army, coming 
thither of his own free will, had thrown himself into the be- 
sieged town, and whenever the enemy stirred, there was always 
at least one English lad in the Arab Tabia directing the coun- 
sels of the garrison, repressing the thought of Bupreuey and 
keeping the men in ‘good heart.! 

There was a part “of the allied camp where the French and 
English soldiery could hear in a quiet hour the distant guns 
of Silistria. Day after day they listened for the continuing of 
the sound, and they listened keenly, for they were expecting 
the end, and there was nothing but the booming of the cannon 
to assure them that the fortress held out. On the 22nd of 
June, and during a great part of the night which followed it, 
they heard the low thunder of the siege more continuously than 
ever before; but on the dawn of the following day they listen- 
ed, and listened in vain. The cannonade had ceased, and it 
was believed in camp that the place had been taken. The op- 
posite of this was the truth. The siege had been raised. The 
event was one upon which the course of history was destined 
to hinge; for this miscarriage at Silistria put an end at once to 
all schemes for the invasion of the Sultan’s dominions in Europe. 

Whilst Europe was still in wonder at the deliverance of Si- 
listria, the French and the English armies at Varna were greeted 
with tidings of yet another victory won by the Turks. 


1 The narratives of the siege of Silistria which appeared in the Times were 
given, as is well known, by Nasmyth himself, and by the officer who sune- 
ceeded to him and to Butler in governing the counsels of the garrison and 
helping to defend the Arab Tabia. Therefore any other account of the siege 
which I might have founded upon the official materials in my possession 
would have been obviously inferior to the newspaper in point of authenticity. 
Accordingly, with the exception of two or three minor facts drawn from the 
correspondence which is in my possession, all I have said of the siege is ta- 
‘kon from those journals of Nasmyth and his successor which were printed in 
the Times during the summer of 1854. 


: 


 ¢ 


Cuap. XXX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 3447 


Hassan Pasha was at Rustchuk, with a large body of Turk- 
ish troops; and at Giurgevo, on the opposite bank of the river, 
General Soimonoff commanded twelve battalions of Russian 
infantry, with several squadrons of horse, and some guns. Both 
The battle of the Russian and the Turkish commanders desired 
Giurgevo. that at this time there should be no conflict; and it 
might be thought that in this respect they would have their 
way; for, although the forces at Rustchuk and at Giurgevo 
were near to each other, the broad Danube rolled between 
them. But the Ottoman soldiery are of so warlike a nature 
that, when their enemy is at hand, they are oftentimes seized 
with a raging desire for the fight; and the one check which 
tends to keep down this passion is a sense of the ineoherency 
which results from the want of good officers. But so ready 
and so deep is their trust in any of our countrymen who will 
take the trouble to lead them, that, if Turkish soldiers be camped 
within reach of the enemy, the coming amongst them of a few 
English youths supplies the one thing needed, completes the 
electric circle, and in general brings on a fight. Now it hap- 
pened that besides General Cannon, who was on duty and in 
command of a Turkish brigade, seven young English officers 
had found their way to the camp of Hassan Pasha. Two of 
these, Captain Bent and Lieutenant Burke, were officers of the 
Royal Engineers; Meynell was a Lieutenant in the 75th Reg- 
iment; Hinde, Arnold, and Ballard (the last of them fresh come 
from Silistria) were officers of our Indian army ; Colonel Ogil- 
vy was General Cannon’s aid-de-camp, but he gave his servi- » 
ces freely, and, indeed, it may be said that, so far as concerns 
the part they took in the battle, every one of these seven young - 
Englishmen was there of his own mere will.! 3 

On the morning of the 7th of July it was observed that the 
Russians had struck their tents, and they were so posted that 
_ their numbers could not be descried from the right bank of the 
river. It was believed in the Turkish camp that Soimonoff 
had withdrawn the main part of his force; and it seems that 
what Hassan Pasha really meant to do was to execute a re- 
connaissance, and assure himself of the enemy’s retreat. Be 
this:as it may, he ordered, or consented, that the river should 
be crossed at two points; and General Cannon, embarking in 
boats with 300 riflemen, and speedily followed by a battalion 


1 The two engineer officers, Captain Bent and Lieutenant Burke, had been 
sent to the Turkish camp with instructions to advise and aid in the construc- 
tion of military works; but of course they had not been ordered to lead the 
Turks into battle, and therefore I include them with the rest of the seven as 
men taking part in the battle without professional sanction. 


348 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XXX. 


of infantry under Ferik Bekir Pasha, succeeded in reaching 
the left bank of the river without encountering resistance. As 
soon as they had landed, the Turks tried to gain a lodgment 
upon a strip of ground where their front was covered by a 
long narrow mere or pool of water. Soon, however, they were 
attacked on their left flank by a body of Russian infantry, 
which issued from an earthwork placed above the western ex- 
tremity of the mere. Cannon and Bent, with their riflemen, 
not only withstood this attack, but drove their assailants back 
into the fosse from which they had issued, and there, it seems, 
a good deal of slaughter took place. Afterward the riflemen 
were forced to give way, and fall back upon the main body of 
the troops which had effected their landing; but young Bal- 
lard led forward another body of skirmishers, and kept the 
enemy back. What was needed was, that the troops which 
had landed should intrench themselves; but they had come 
without gabions or sand-bags, and nothing as yet could be 
done toward gaining a firm lodgment. There was a good deal 
of confusion amongst the troops, and the enterprise seemed 
likely to fail, when Ali Pasha, who was a brave and an able 
officer, came over with fresh troops. He soon restored order, 
and the men began to throw up intrenchments. 

Meanwhile two battalions, led on by Ogilvy, Hinde, Arnold, 
Meynell, and Burke, had crossed the river higher up, in de- 
tached bodies, and, although these small bands were left from 
first to last without re-enforcements, although they had to 
move flank-wise close under the guns of a Russian battery, 
which killed very many, and although they were sharply at- 
tacked and at one time hard pressed by the enemy’s infantry, 
as well as by four squadrons of cavalry, the remnant of these 
venturesome men fought their way down along the river’s 
bank, and at last made good their junction with the main 
body, then intrenching itself behind the mere. But before 
they attained to this, they had lost a great proportion of their 
comrades, and of their five youthful leaders they had lost three, 
for Burke, Arnold, and Meynell were killed. 

Meanwhile fresh troops had been crossing the river at the 
point opposite to the landing-place first seized; and at length 
there was established, on the ground behind the mere, a force 
of some five thousand men. 

Upon either flank of this body the Russian infantry came 
down in strong columns. Four times the attack was made, 
and four times the Turks, commanded or led on by Ali Pasha 
and General Cannon, by Bent, Hinde, Ogilvy, and Ballard, 
drove back their assailants with great slanghter. With vious 


Cuap. XXX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 349 


and warlike cries, the Turks sallied over their new-made par- 
apets, brought their bayonets down to the charge, forced mass 
after mass to give way, and fiercely pressed the retreat. 

At sunset the action ceased. All night the Turks were in- 
trenching themselves on the ground which they had gained, 
but, when the morning dawned, there was no sign that the 
enemy would hasten to renew the battle. 

To keep a safe hold of the ground which had been won, it 
was necessary for the Turks to advance in the direction of 
their left front, and occupy a ridge which went by the name 
of the Slobenzie Heights ; but Hassan Pasha dreaded the blame 
which might fall upon him if the movement should prove to 
be a wrong one. General Cannon pressed him hard. For 
some time in vain; but at length the Pasha yielded, upon con- 
dition that the English General would give him a written war- 
ranty certifying the wisdom of the step. 

On the third day after the battle, Prince Gortschakoff came 
up with a force which was said to number some sixty or sev- 
enty thousand men. He had been set free by the raising of 
the siege of Silistria, and he now appeared upon one of the 
ranges of hills looking down upon Giurgevo from the north- 
west. It seemed that he meant to cover over the stain of the 
defeat sustained at Giurgevo by driving the Turks back into 
the river; but before he camped for the night the British flag 
was already in the waters beneath him. 

Lieutenant Glyn and the young Prince Leiningen, both serv- 
ing on board the ‘ Britannia,’ had come up from the sea, with 
some gunboats and thirty seamen, together with a lke number 
of sappers. Glyn quickly carried his gunboats into the narrow 
loop-stream which escapes from the main of the river above 
Giurgevo, and meets it againlower down. By this movement 
Glyn thrust his gunboats into the interval which divided the 
Russian army from the Turks. Gortschakoff, perhaps, over- 
rated the force which had come with the British flag. At all 
events, he did not instantly move down to the attack, and, 
whilst he seemed to hesitate, the Turks and the English work- 
ed hard. Captain Bent and his sappers, with the aid of our 
seamen and the Turks, threw a bridge of boats across the main 
stream of the Danube. This done, it was plain that, if Gorts- 
chakoff were to attack, he would have to do not merely with 
the five thousand Turks already established on the left bank, 
but with the whole of the force which lay at Rustchuk. He 
resolved to avoid the encounter. Retreating upon Bucharest, 
he no longer disputed with the Turks for the mastery of the 
Lower Danube. 


350 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XXX) 


In this campaign on the Danube, those who fought for the 
cause of the Sultan were helped, it is true, by Fortune, by the 
anger and unskillfulness of the Czar, by the assured support 
of Austria, and by the impending power of England and 
France; but still there is one point of view in which their 
achievement was a great one. Military ascendency is so close- 
rect ofthe LY Connected with military reputation, that to be the 
campaign of first to bring down the warlike fame of a great em- 
the nile pire is to do a mighty work, and a work, too, which 
ened bey of hardly can fail to change the career of nations. By 
H the time that Prince Gortschakoff retreated upon 
Bucharest, people no longer thought of the Czar as they 
thought of him eight months before; and the glory of thus 
breaking down the military reputation of Russia is due of 
right, not to the Governments nor the armies of France or 
England, but to the warlike prowess of the Ottoman soldiery, 
and the ten or twelve resolute Englishmen who cheered, and 
helped, and led them. 

The failure of the attempted invasion was almost abana 
followed by the relinquishment of Moldavia and Wallachia. 
The Emperor Nicholas, as we saw, had been placed by Austria 
under the stress of a peremptory summons requiring him to 
withdraw from the Principalities, and, the demand being sup- 
ported by powerful bodies of troops which threatened the flank 
of the intruding army, the Czar was schooled at last, and com- 
pelled to see that he must surrender his hold of the provinces 
which he had chosen to call his ‘material guarantee.’ 

Thus, by the course of the events which followed it, the 
Czar’s last defeat on the Danube was made to appear more 
signal than it really was. Of course men versed in war and in 
politics knew that causes of a larger kind than a few hours’ 
fight at Giurgevo were bringing about the abandonment of 
the Principalities ; but people who drew their conclusions from 
the mere advance or retreat of armies, and from the issue of 
battles, were left to infer that the once dreaded Emperor of 
the Russias was chased from the country of the Danube by the 
sheer prowess of the victorious Turks. 

It is, therefore, very easy to believe that this discomfiture at 
The agony of Giurgevo was more bitter to the Czar than any of 
ps Czar the disasters which had hitherto tried his fortitude. 
People knew, or affected to know, what the troubled man ut- 
tered in torment, and the words they put in his mouth ran 
somewhat to this effect: 

‘I can understand Oltenitza— I can even understand that 
‘Omar Pasha should have been able to hold against me his 


Cuap. XXX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 351 


‘lines at Kalafat—I can partly account for the result of those 
‘fights at Citate—I can understand Silistria—the strongest 
‘may fail in a siege—and it chanced that both Paskievitch and 
‘Schilders were struck down and disabled by shot—but—but 

‘_but—that Turks—mere Turks—led on by a General of Se- 

‘poys and six or seven English boys—that they should dare to 
‘cross the Danube in the face of my troops—that, daring to at- 
‘tempt this, they should do it, and hold fast their gr ound—that 
‘my troops should give way pefore them, and that this—that 
‘this should be the last act of the campaign which is ending 
‘in the retreat of my whole army, and the abandonment of the 
‘Principalities. Heaven lays upon me more than I can bear!’ 

Many men in the Anglo-French camp were -fretted by the 
tidings of this last Turkish victory ; for, besides that, with their 
natural and healthy impatience of delay, they were stung by 
the example of their Moslem ally, there was in the staff of the: 
French and the English armies a pedantic dislike of wild 
troops. In this respect Lord Raglan had no breadth of view. 
Lord Raglan’s Far from under standing that the hardy, the fierce, 
qialike of un- the devout, the temper ate Moslems of the Ottoman 
combatants. provinces were the rough yet sound material with 
which superb troops could be made, he always looked upon 
these brave men, but especially upon the genus which people 
called ‘ Bashi-Bazouks,’ with an almost superstitious horror. 
He was so constituted, or rather he was so schooled down by 
long years of flat oftice labor, that it shocked him to see a man 
bearing no uniform, yet warlike, and armed to the teeth. In- 
deed, from Bulgaria he once wrote and complained quite grave- 
ly that every Turk he saw had the appearance of being a ‘ ban- 
dit ; and the prejudice clung to him; for, long after the period 
now spoken of, and even in the very hour when the fatal storm 
of the 14th of November was roar ing through his port and his 
camp, he found time to sit at a desk and w rite down the Bashi- 
Bazouks. 

This hatred of undrilled warriors was the more perverse, 
since England, above all other nations, was rich in men (men 
like Hodson, for instance, or Jacob) who knew how to make 
themselves the adored chiefs of Asiatic soldiers. 

Besides, it must be borne in mind, that when an English 
Importance to Government undertakes to Ww: age war in a country 
eae,” beyond the seas without doing all it can to get 
ries. soldierly aid from the natives, it does not merely 
neglect a slight or collateral advantage. On the contrary, it 
throws S away its power of acting with ‘efficient numbers, and is 
in danger of frittering away the nation’s strength upon those 


352 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXX. 


(often ill-fated) schemes which go by the name of ‘expedi- 
‘tions.’ Without our Portuguese auxiliaries there would have 
been no great Peninsular War, no successful invasion of France. 
Without the native soldiery of Uindostan there would have 
been no British India. Without the German auxiliaries who 
served under Wellington in his last campaign, he could not 
have given battle to Napoleon in the Netherlands, and the 
course of English history would not have run as it did. The 
truth is, that (especially at the beginning of a war) any body 
of troops which England brings together at one time and one 
place is in general so costly, and of so high a quality, but also 
so scant in numbers, that to use it, and use it singly for all the 
work of the campaign, is to consume and squander the pre- 
cious essence of the nation’s strength without making it the 
means of attaining any worthy result. 

Therefore, whenever it is possible, a British force ser ving 
abroad and engaged i in an arduous campaign ought to have by 
its side—not mere allies, for that is but a doubtful, and often a 
poor support to have to lean upon, but auxiliaries obeying the 
English commander, and capable of being trusted with a large 
share of the duties required from an army in the field. Nor is 
this an advantage which commonly lies out of our reach; for 
in most of the countries of the Old World the cost of labor is 
much lower than in England, and it is one of the prerogatives 
of the English, as, indeed, of all conquering nations, to be able 
to lead other races of men, and to impart to them its warlike 
fire. By beginning its preparations at the right time, and by 
bringing under the orders of some of our Indian officers a fit- 
ting “number of the brave men who came flocking to the war 
from every province of the Ottoman Empire, our Government 
might have enabled their General to take the field with an 
army of great strength; with an army more fit for warlike en- 
terprises than two armies—French and English—instructed to 
work side by side, and baffled by divided command.! 


* The opinions which the Duke of Newcastle entertained on this subject 
were sound, and his efforts to give effect to them were vigorous; but he was 
thwarted by the curious antagonism which commonly shows itself at the be- 
ginning of a war—the antagonism between views really warlike and views 
which are only ‘military.’ 


Cnar. XXXI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 353 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


By their own prowess, with the aid only of a moral support 
The events on from their great allies and the actual presence of a 
the Danubere- few young English officers, the Ottoman soldiery 
grounds ofthe had repelled the invasion; and, the defense of Tur- 
King key being accomplished in a way very glorious to the 
Sultan, and the deliverance of the Principalities being secured, 
it suddenly became apparent that the objects for which the 
Western Powers undertook the war had been already attain- 
ed. And, since (by the mere act of declaring war against the 
Czar) the Porte had freed itself from the obnoxious treaties 
which heretofore entangled its freedom, the condition of affairs 
was such that a prudent statesman of France, or of England, 
or of the Ottoman empire might have well enough rested con- 
tent. And in that condition of affairs the Emperor of Russia 
must have acquiesced; for, having now learned that he could 
not maintain an invasion of European Turkey, and being driv- 
en from the seas, he was cut off from all means of waging an 
offensive war against the Sultan except upon the desolate front- 
iers of Armenia, and the pressure of the naval blockade en- 
forced against him by the Allies, together with the torture of 
seeing the Baltic and the Euxine plaeed under the dominion’ 
of their fleets, would have more than sufficed to make him 
sign a peace. 

If France had been mistress of herself, or if England had 
been free from passion and craving for adventure, the war 
would have been virtually at an end on the day when the Rus- 
sian army completed its retreat from the country of the Dan- 
ube, and re-entered the Czar’s dominions. 

How came it to happen that, rejecting the: peace which 
seemed to be thus prepared by the mere course of events, the 
Western Powers determined to undertake the invasion of a 
Russian province ? 

France was still lying under the men who had got her down 
Helplessness 00 the night of the 2nd of December; and it was 
ofthe French in vain that her people at that time chanced to love 
A peace better than war, for they had no longer a 
voice in state affairs. The French Emperor still wielded the 
whole strength of the nation, and, laboring to turn away men’s 


B54 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXTI. 


thoughts from the origin of ae power, he was very willing to 
Gourse taken t'Y to earn for the restored Empire that kind of 
by the French station and title which the newest of dynasties may 
ae acquire by signal achievements in war. It was 
still of great moment to him to remain in close friendship with 
England, and to use the alliance as an engine of war; but he 
observed that there was a spirit on this side of the Channel 
which—springing from motives very unlike his own—was nevy- 
ertheless tending in the same direction, and therefore, to draw 
England in, he no longer needed to resort to those ingenious 
contrivances which he had employed against her in the fore- 
going year. All that he had to do was to encourage her de- 
sire to go on with the war, and, if necessary, to make his own 
plans yield to those of his ally. To do all this he was very 
able, for he had, as we have seen, at that time the power of 
keeping his mind alive to the difference between the greater . 
and the less, and after he had once resolved to engage in al- 
liance with England, he did not allow his main purpose to be 
baffled by differences on minor questions. Therefore now, 
when it became known that the Russian army was in full re- 
treat, he was so willing to defer to English counsels, that vir- 
tually, though not in terms, he left it to the Queen’s Govern- 
ment to determine what next step the Western Powers should 
take in the conduct of the war. | 

England had become so eager for conflict that the idea of, 
Desire of the Cesisting from the war merely because the war had 
English foran ceased to be necessary was not tolerable to the 
ofensive war’ Heople. In the Baltic their hopes had been bitter- 
ly disappointed, and, as soon as it became clear that the de- 
fense of Turkey was a thing already accomplished, men longed 
to try the prowess of our land and sea forces in some enter- 
prise against the Russian dominions. Already they had cast 
their eyes upon Sebastopol. 

With a view to the conquest of empire on the Bosphor us, 
the ambition of Russia had taken advantage of the 
spacious port on the southwest coast of the Crimea, 
had made there a great arsenal, and furnished it with an enor- 
mous supply of warlike stores. And, having been warned a 
quarter of a century ago! that if he thus gathered his strength 


Sebastopol. 


1 Dispatch from Count Pozzo di Borgo, dated the 28th of November, 
1828-9.  ‘ Although,’ writes the Count, ‘it may not be probable that we 
‘shall see an English fleet in the Black Sea, it will be prudent to make Se- 
‘bastopol very secure against attacks from the sea. If ever England were 
‘to come to a rupture with us, this is the point to which she would direct her 
‘attacks, if only she believed them possible.’ 


>. 


Cuap. XXXI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 355 


in Sebastopol, he might have to count some day with the En- 
glish, the Czar Nicholas had caused the place to be defended 
toward the sea by forts of great power. In the harbor, barred 
The longing of PY these forts, his Black Sea fleet lay at anchor, 
the English to Plainly it would be a natural and’ fitting consum- 
ea mation of a war in defense of the Sultan to destroy 
those very resources which the labors of years had gathered 
together against him. Moreover, the English, who hate the 
mechanic contrivances which prevent fair, open fighting, could 
hardly now bear that the vast sea-forts of Sebastopol should 
continue to shelter the Russian fleet from the guns of our men- 
of-war. Those who thought more warily than the multitude 
foresaw that the enterprise might take time; but they also 
perceived that even this result would not be one of unmixed 
evil, for if Russia should commit herself to a lengthened con- 
flict in the neighborhood of Sebastopol, she would be put to a 
great trial, and would see her wealth and strength ruinously 
consumed by the mere stress of the distance between the 
military centre of the empire and the southwesternmost angle 
of the Crimea. | 

The more the English people thought of the enterprise, the 
more eager they became to attempt it; and it chanced that 
their feelings and opinions were shared and represented with 
‘great exactness by the Minister of War. 

The Duke of Newcastle was a man of a sanguine, eager na- 
The Dukeof ture, very prone to action.’ He had a good, clear 
Newcastle. intellect, with more of strength than keenness, un- 
‘wearied industry, and an astonishing facility of writing. In the 
assumption of responsibility he was generous and bold even to 
rashness. Indeed, he was so eager to see his views carried into 
effect, and so willing to take all the risk upon his own head, that 
there was danger of his. withdrawing from other men their 
wholesome share of discretion. He threw his whole heart into 
the project of the invasion; and if the Prime Minister and Mr, 
Gladstone were men driven forward by the feeling of the coun- 
try in spite of their opinions and their scruples, it was not so 
with the Duke of Neweastle. The character of his mind was 
such as to make him essentially one with the public. Far 
from being propelled by others against his will, he himself was 
one of the very foremost members of the warlike throng which 
was pressing upon the Cabinet, and craving for adventure and 


1 T, of course, know that this view will not be assented to by those who 

found their opinion upon observation made in later years; but I am speak- 

ing of the summer of 1854, and I am very sure that the sentence to which 
this note has been appended is true. 


856 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXI. 


glory. He easily received new impressions, and had neverthe- 
less a quick good sense, which generally enabled him to distin- 
guish what was useful from what was worthless. He seemed 
to understand the great truth that, without being military, the 
Hueglish are a warlike people, and that it is one of the great 
prerogatives of a nation gifted with this higher quality to be 
able to command other races of men, and to impart to them 
the fire of martial virtue. He also knew that, when England 
undertakes war against a great European power, she must en- 
gage the energies of the “people at large, and must not pre- 
sume to rely altogether upon the merely professional exertions 
of her small Peace Establishment. It was not from his de- 
fault, but in spite of his endeavors, that, for several months, 
people lingered in the notion that our military system was an 
apparatus sufficing for war. 

But the Duke had not an authority proportioned to the 
merits which a reader of his dispatches and letters would be 
inclined to attribute to him. Perhaps the very zeal with which 
he seized and adopted the ideas of the cuter public was one 
of the causes which tended to lessen his weight; for he who 
comes into council with common and popular views, however 
likely it may be that he will get them assented to, can scarce- 
ly hope to kindle men’s minds with the fire that springs from 
a man’s own thought and from his own strong will. More- 
over, it was by a kind of chance rather than by intentional 
selection that the Duke of Newcastle had become intrusted 
with the momentous business of the war; and, seemingly, it 
was only from this circumstance that the propriety of his con- 
tinuing to hold the office was afterward brought into question 
by one of his principal colleagues.1 But, whatever may have 
been the cause, it seems clear that there was a languor, not to 
say hollowness, in the support which the Duke got from his 


1 So Lord John Russell himself declared. What I have above called ‘a 
‘kind of chance’ was brought about in this way :—According to the practice 
which was in force up to the summer of 1854, the Secretary of State for the 
Colonies was also the ‘Secretary of War.’ Before the war, however, the 
public hardly observed, and, in fact, hardly knew this; because, in peace- 
time (thanks to the labors of the ‘ Horse-Guards,’ the office of the Secretary 
at War, the Ordnance, and several other offices), the duties of the Colonial 
Secretary, i in his character as Secretary of War, were very slight ; and, there 
being no prospect of war when. Lord “Aberdeen’s ministry was formed, the 
Duke of Newcastle was of course selected with a view to his qualifications 
for the administration of the Colonies, and not with any consideration, either 
one way or the other, as to his aptitude for the business of the War Depart- 
ment. When the rupture with Russia occurred, it became apparent that, 
unless a change were made, the minister who happened to be the Colonial 
Secretary would stand charged with the business of the war. 


Cuap. XXNXI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 357 


colleagues. They did not perversely thwart him in the busi- 
ness of the war,! but, on the other -hand, they did not at all 
fasten themselves to his measures like men who would stand 
or fall with him. The Duke of Newcastle had not the gift of 
knowing how to surround himself with able assistants, and it 
was his misfortune to be without that precious aid which a 
Minister commonly finds in the permanent staff of his office. 
At the outbreak of hostilities, the little bevy of distinct public 
offices on which the military administration depended was in 
a condition unfit to meet the exigencies of war. The first 
Army Surgeon who applied for certain of the medical stores 

required on foreign service was met with no less than five of- 
ficial theories as to the functionary upon whom the demand 
should be made; and when, in the month of June, the scatter- 
ed departments connected with the land service were gathered 
at last into one, the office thus newly formed was, after all, so 
ill constituted as to be wanting in some of the simplest appli- 
ances required for the transaction of business. 

From the first, the Duke of Newcastle, resisting all proposals 
His zeal for for operating against Russia on the side of Poland, 
thn we Setys. had warmly shared the popular desire to invade the 
tion of Sebas- x Po 
topol. Crimea, and lay siege to Sebastopol. The Emperor 
of the French, steadily following his main policy, had long ago 
consented to look to this enterprise as next in importance to 
the defense of the Sultan’s territory, and, in the early part of 
April, instructions to this effect had been given to the French 
and the English Generals. 

It would seem, however, that at first the Duke of Newcastle 
was the only member of the Government who was fired with 
a great eagerness for the destruction of Sebastopol; and of 
himself he had not the ascendency which sometimes enables a 
Minister to bend other men to his purpose. Unless by the 
‘help of a mighty force pressing from without, he could not haye 
brought the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen to partake his zeal for 
the enterpr ise. 

But—impending over the counsels of all the ostensible rulers 
—there was an authority not deriving from the Queen or the 
Parliament, which was destined to have a great sway over 


1 The rejection by the Cabinet of the Duke’s proposal to ask for a vote 
adding 25,000 men ta, the army does not, in reality, displace the above state- 
ment, becaus¢ the addition to which the Cabinet agreed, though falling short 
of the Duke’s demand, was large enough to warrant the reception of all the 
recruits who could be obtained in the course of the year, and therefore the 
proposed vote for a number larger than what could be really obtained was a 
measure of general policy not tending in any direct way to increase the 
strength of the army. 


358 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuap. XXXT) 


events. It would be possible to elude the task, but it seems 
to me that a history would be wanting in fullness of truth if 
it failed to impart some conception of this other power. 

England was free; and although, whilst there was indiffer- 
Gentatding ence or divided opinion in the country, the Govern- 
ak hte of Ment had very full latitude of action, yet, whenever 
one mind. it chanced that the feelings of the people were 
roused, and that they were known to be nearly of one mind, 
they spoke with a voice so commanding, that no Administra- 
tion could safely try to withstand it. 

But, the will of the nation being thus puissant, who was 
charged to declare it? 

In former times almost every body who could was accus- 
Means of form- tomed to contribute in an active way to the forma- 
ing the opimien tion of opinion. Men evolved their own political’ 
of the nation. jdeas and drew forth the ideas of their friends. by: 
keen oral discussion, and, in later times, by long, elaborate let- 
ters. But gradually, and following somewhat slowly upon the: 
invention of printing, there came to be introduced a new divi- 
sion of labor. It was found that if a small number of compe- 
tent men would make it their calling to transact the business 
of thinking upon political questions, the work might be more 
handily performed by them than by the casual efforts of people 
who were commonly busied in other sorts of toil; and as soon’ 
as this change took effect, the weighing of state questions and 
the judging of public men lapsed away from the direct cog- 
nizance of the nation at large, and passed into the hands of: 
those who knew how to utter in print. What had been an in- 
tellectual exercise practised in a random way by thousands, 
was turned into a branch of industry, and pursued with great: 
skill by afew. People soon found out that an essay in print— 
an essay strong and terse, but above all opportune, seemed to 
clear their minds more effectually than the sayings which they 
heard in conversation, or the letters they received from their 
friends; and at length the principle of divided labor became so’ 
complete in its application to the forming of political opinions, 
that by glancing at a newspaper, and giving swift assent to its 
assertions and ar guments, many an Englishman was saved the 
labor of farther examining his political conscience, and dis- 
pensed from the necessity of having to work,his own way to a 
conclusion. 

But to spare a man from a healthy tou is not always an un. 
Effect of polit. Mixed good. To save a free-born citizen from the 
wine = trouble of thinking upon questions of State is to take 


from the trou- from him his share of dominion ; and, although it be: 


Cuap. XXXI_.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 859 


ble of think- true that he who follows printed advice is under a 
et guidance more skillful and dexterous than any he 
could have got from his own untutored mind, he is less of a 
man, and, upon the whole, is less fair, less righteous than one 
who in a ruder fashion contrives to think for himself, Just as 
a man’s quality may in some respects be lowered by his habit- 
ual reliance on the policeman and the soldier who relieve him 
from the trouble and the anxiety of self-defense, so his intel- 
lectual strength and his means of knowing how to be just may 
easily become impaired if he suffers himself to walk’ too obe- 
diently under the leading of a political writer. 

But the ability of men engaged in political writing grew even 
Wakeofpro) more rapidly than the power to which they were 
portion be- attaining, and after a while they so gained upon the 
of the public OStensible statesmen that Parliament no longer stood 
Vidiial con, lone as the exponent of opinion, and was obliged 
petence ofhis to share its privilege with a number of gifted men 
Bee whose names it could hardly ever find out. Still, 
Parliament had valor and strength of its own, and, except in 
the matter of mere eclebrity, it was a gainer rather than a loser 
from the wholesome rivalry forced upon it by its new and mys- 
terious associate. It was the public which lagged. Men com- 
monly take a long time to adapt themselves to the successive 
advances of civilization ; and the people were backward in fit- 
ting themselves to deal with the increasing ability and the in- 
creasing knowledge of the public writer. They, indeed, hard- 
ly knew the true scope of the change which had been taking 
place; for, whilst the writer was a personage chosen for his 
skill, and acting with the force which belongs to discipline and 
organization, the readers were men straying loose; and for 
their means of acting in any thing like concert with one an- 
other, they were dependent in a great degree upon that very 
engine of publicity which was fast usurping their power. 
Moreover, these readers of public prints were slow to under- 
stand the new kind of duty which had come upon them. They 
were slow to see that it became them to look in a very critical 
spirit upon the writings of a stranger, unseen and unknown 
who was not only proposing to guide them, but even to speak 
in their name; and they did not yet understand that they 
ought to read print—not perhaps in a captious spirit, but, to 
say the least, with something of the measured confidence which 
their forefathers had been accustomed to place in the words 
of princes and statesmen. The blessing conferred by print will 
perhaps be complete when the diligence, the wariness, and, 
above all, the courageous justice of those who read, shall be 


360 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Ciap. XXXI. 


brought into fair proportion with the skill and the power of 
those who address them in print. Already a wholesome change 
has been wrought; and if in these days a man goes chanting 
and chanting in servile response to a newspaper, he misses the 
voices of the tens of thousands of fellow-choristers who sang 
with him five years ago. But certainly at the time of the Rus- 
sian war the common discourse of an Englishman was too often 
a mere ‘ Amen” to something he had seen in print. 

For a long time there had remained to the general public a 
vestige of their old custom of thinking for themselves, because 
in last resort they were privileged to determine between the 
rival counsels pressed upon them by contending journalists ; 
but several years before the outbreak of the war there had 
come yet another change. The apparatus provided by the 
Constitution for collecting the opinions of the people was far 
from being complete; and, notwithstanding the indications af- 
forded by Parliament and by public writings, the direction 
which the nation’s opinion had taken was a matter which could 
often be called in question. Some could say that the people 
desired one thing, and some, with equal boldness, that the peo- 
ple desired the contrary. Thence it came that the task of find- 
ing out the will of the nation, and giving to it a full voice and 
expression, was undertaken by private citizens. 

Long before the outbreak of the war there were living in 
The task ofas- Some Of the English counties certain widows and 
fecatingtie, gentlemen, who were the depositaries of a power 
opinion of the destined to exercise a great sway over the conduct 
ftrtheienas of the war. Their ways were peaceful, and they 
ofacompany. were not perhaps more turned toward politics than 
other widows and country gentlemen, but by force of deeds 
and testaments, by force of births, deaths, and marriages, they 
had become the members of an ancient firm or Company which 
made it its business to collect and disseminate news. They 
had so much good sense of the worldly sort, that instead of 
struggling with one another for the control of their powerful 
engine, they remained quietly at their homes, and engaged some 
active and gifted men to manage the concern for them in Lon- 
don. The practice of the Company was to issue a paper daily; 
containing an account of what was going on in the world, to- 
gether with letters from men of all sorts and conditions who 
were seeking to bring their favorite subjects under the eye of 
the public, and also a few short essays upon the topics of the 
day. Likewise, upon paying the sum required by the Company, 
any person could cause whatever he chose to be inserted in the 
paper as an “advertisement,” and the sheet containing these 


Cuap.XXXI.J INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 361 


four descriptions of matter was sold to the public at a low 
rate. 

Extraordinary enterprise was shown by the Company in the 
gathering of intelligence; and during the wars following the 
- French Revolution they caused their dispatches from the Con- 
tinent to reach them so early that they were able to forestall 
the Government of the day. In other countries the spectacle 
of a Government outdone in this way by private enterprise 
would have seemed a scandal; but the Englishman liked the 
thought that he could buy and bring to his own home as much 
knowledge as was in the hands of a Minister of State, and he 
enjoyed the success of his fellow-countrymen in their rivalry 
with the Government. From this time the paper gathered 
strength. It became the foremost journal of the world; and 
this was no sooner the case than the mere fact of its being thus 
foremost gave a great acceleration to its rise, for simply because 
it was recognized as the most public of prints it became the 
clew with which anxious man went seeking in the maze of the 
busy world for the lost, and the unknown, and all that was be- 
yond his own reach. The prince who was claiming a kingdom, 
the servant who wanted a place, the mother who had lost her 
boy, they all went thither. Thither Folly ran hurrying, and 
was brought to a wholesome parley with Wisdom. Thither 
went righteous anger. Thither also went hatred and malice. 
And not in vain was all this concourse; for either the troubled 
and angry men got the discipline of finding that the world 
would not listen to their cries, or else they gained a vent for 
their passions, and brought all their theories to a test by call- 
ing a whole nation—nay, by calling the civilized world—to 
hearken and be their witness. Over all this throng of appel- 
lants men unknown sat in judgment, and—violently, perhaps, 
but never corruptly—a rough sort of justice was done. The 
style which Oriental hyperbole used to give to the Sultan might 
be claimed with more color of truth by the journal. In a sense 
it was the ‘asylum of the world.’ 

Still, up to this point the Company occupied ground in com- 
mon with many other speculators, and if they had gone no far- 
ther, it would not have been my province to notice the result 
of their labors. But many years ago it had occurred to the 
managers of this Company that there was one important arti- 
cle of news which had not been effectually supplied. It seemed 
likely that, without moving from his fireside, an Englishman 
would be glad to know what the bulk of his fellow-countrymen 
thought upon the uppermost questions of the day. The letters 
received from correspondents furnished some means of acquir- 


Vor. I.—Q 


362 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Cuar. XXXI. 


ing this knowledge, and it seemed to the managers of the Com- 
pany that, at some pains and at a moderate cost, it would be 
possible to ascertain the opinions which were coming into 
vogue, and see the direction in which the current would flow. 
It is said that with this intent they many years ago employed » 
a shrewd, idle clergyman, who made it his duty to loiter about 
in places of common resort and find out what people thought 
upon the principal subjects of the time. He was not to listen 
very much to extreme foolishness, and still less was he to 
hearken to clever people. His duty was to wait and wait un- 
til he observed that some common and obvious thought was 
repeated in many places, and by numbers of men who had 
probably never seen one another. ‘That one common thought 
was the prize he sought for, and he carried it home to his em- 
ployers. He became so skilled in his peculiar calling that, as 
long as he served them, the Company was rarely misled; and 
although in later times they were frequently baffled in their 
pursuit of this kind of knowledge, they never neglected to do 
what they could to search the heart of the nation. 

When the managers had armed themselves with the knowl- 
edge thus gathered, they prepared to disseminate it, but they 
did not state baldly what they had ascertained to be the opin- 
ion of the country. Their method was as follows:—they em- 
ployed able writers to argue in support of the opimion which, 
as they believed, the country was already adopting, and, sup- 
posing that they had been well informed, their arguments of 
course fell upon willing ears. Those who had already formed 
a judgment saw their own notions stated and pressed with an 


- ability greater than they could themselves command; and those 


who had not yet come to an opinion were strongly moved to- 
do so when they saw the path taken by a Company which no- 
toriously strove to follow the changes of the public mind. The 
report which the paper gave of the opinion formed by the pub- 
lic was so closely blended with arguments in support of that 
same opinion, that he who looked at the paper merely to know 
what other people thought, was seized as he read by the co- 
gency of the reasoning; and, on the other hand, he who imag- 
ined that he was being governed by the force of sheer logic, 
was merely obeying a guide who, by telling him that the world 
was already agreed, made him go and flock along with his fel- 
lows; for, as the utterance of a prophecy is sometimes a main 
step toward its fulfillment, so a rumor asserting that multitudes 
have already adopted a given opinion will often generate that 
very concurrence of thought which was prematurely declared 
to exist. I‘rom the operation of this double process it result- 


Cuap. XXXI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 363 


ed of course that: the opinion of the English public was gener- 
ally in accord with the writings of the Company; and the more 
the paper came to be regarded as a true exponent of the na- 
tional mind, the more vast was the publicity which it obtained. 
Plainly, then, this printing Company wielded a great power ; 
and if I have written with sufficient clearness, I have made it 
apparent that this was a power of more vast dimensions than 
that which men describe when they speak of “the power of 
the Press.” It is one thing, for instance, to denounce a public 
man by printed arguments and invectives which are believed 
to utter nothing more than the opinion of the writers, and it is 
another and a graver thing to denounce him in writings which, 
though having the form of arguments, are (rightly or wrongly) 
regarded as manifestoes—as manifestoes declaring the judg- 
ment of the English people. In the one case the man is only 
accused, in the other he seems to stand already condemned. 
But though the Company held all this power, their tenure 
of it was of such a kind that they could not exercise it per- 
versely or whimsically without doing a great harm to their 
singular trade; for the whole scheme of their existence went 
to make them—not autocratic, but—representative in their 
character, and they were obliged by the law of their being to 
keep themselves as closely as they could in accord with the 
nation at large. 
This, then, was the great English journal; and, whether men 
spoke of the mere printed sheet which lay upon their table, or 
of the mysterious organization which produced it, they habitu- 
ally called either one or the other ‘The Times.’ Moreover, 
they often prefixed to the word such adjectives and participles 
as showed that they regarded the subject of their comments 
in the light of a-sentient, active being, having a life beyond the 
span of mortal men, gifted with reason, armed with a cruel 
strength, endued with some of the darkest of the human pas- 
sions, but clearly liable hereafter to the direst penalty of sin.! 
On the Sabbath England had rest, but in the early morning 
of all other days the irrevocable words were poured forth and 
scattered abroad to the corners of the earth, measuring out 
honor to some, and upon others bringing scorn and disgrace. 
' The form of speech which thus impersonates a manufactory and its wares 
has now so obtained in our language that—discarding the forcible epithets— 
one may Venture to adopt it in writing, and to give The Times the same place 
in grammatical construction as though it were the-proper name of an angel 
or a hero, a devil or a saint, or a sinner already condemned. Custom makes 
it good English to say ‘The Times will protect him,’ ‘The Times is savage,’ 
‘The Times is crushing him,’ ‘‘The blessed Times has put the thing right,’ 
‘That d Times has done all the mischief.’ 


864 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXT; 


Where and with whom the real power lay, and what was its 
true source, and how it was to be propitiated—these were 
questions wrapped in more or less obscurity; for some had a 
theory that one man ruled, and some another, and some were 
sure that the Great Newspaper governed all England, and oth- 
ers that England governed the Newspaper. Philosophie poli- 
ticians traced events to what they called ‘Public opinion.’ 
With almost the same meaning, women and practical men sim- 
ply spoke of ‘The Times.’ But, whether the power of the great 
journal was a power all its own, or whether it was only the 
vast shadow of the public mind, it was almost equally to be 
dreaded and revered by worldly men; for plainly in that sum- 
mer of 1854 it was one with England. Its words might be 
wrong, but it was certain that to tens of thousands of men they 
would seem to be right. They might be the collected voice 
of all these isles, or the mere utterance of some one unknown 
man sitting pale by a midnight lamp—but there they were. 
They were the handwriting on the wall. 

Of the temper and spirit in which this strange power had 
been wielded, up to the time of the outbreak of the war, it is 
not very hard to speak. In general, ‘The Times’ had been 
more willing to lead the nation in its tendencies to improve- 
ment than to follow it in its errors; what it mainly sought was 
—not to be much better or wiser than the English people, but 
to be the very same as they were, to go along with them in all 
their adventures, whether prudent or rash, to be one with them 
in their hopes and their despair, in their joy and in their sor- 
row, in their gratitude and in their anger. So, although in 
general it was willing enough to repress the growth of any 
new popular error which seemed to be weakly rooted, still the 
whole scheme and purpose of the Company forbade it all 
thought of trying to make a stand against any great and gen- 
eral delusion. Upon the whole, the potentate dealt with En- 
gland in a bluff, kingly, Tudor-like way, but also with a Tudor- 
like policy; for, though he treated all adversaries as ‘ brute folk’ 
until they became formidable, he had always been careful to 
mark the growth ofa public sentiment or opinion, and, as soon 
as he was able to make out that a cause was waxing strong, he 
went up and offered to lead it, and so reigned. 

Thave said that partly by guiding, but more by ascertaining 
and following the current of men’s opinion, ‘The Times’ always 
sought to be one with the great body of the people; and since 
it happened that there was at this period a rare concurrence 
of feeling, and that the journal, after a good deal of experiment, ~ 
had now at length thoroughly seized and embodied the soul of 


Cuar. XXXI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 865. 
the nation, its utterance came with increasing force; and in 
proportion as the growing concord of the people enabled it to 
»speak with more and more authority, power lapsed and contin- 
ued to lapse from out of the hands of the Government, until at 
length public opinion—no longer content to direct the general 
policy of the State—was preparing to undertake the almost 
scientific, the almost technical duty of planning a campaign. 

On the morning of the 15th of June, the great newspaper 
The opinion of declared and said that ‘The grand political and mili- 
Meinvan ty ike ‘tary objects of the war could not be attained as long 
Company de- ‘as Sebastopol and the Russian fleet were in exist- 
tinctionet ‘ence, but that if that central position of the Rus- 
Sebastopol. sian power in the south of the empire were anni- 
‘hilated, the whole fabric, which it had cost the Czars of Russia 
‘centuries to raise, must fall to the ground; and moreover it 
declared, ‘that the taking of Sebastopol and the occupation of 
‘the Crimea were objects which would repay all the costs of 
‘the war, and would permanently settle in our favor the prin- 
‘cipal questions in dispute, and that it was equally clear that 
‘those objects were to be accomplished by no other means, be- 
‘cause a peace which should leave Russia in possession of the 
‘same means of aggression would only enable her to re-com- 
‘mence the war at her pleasure.’ 

It was natural that some of the members of the Government 
should have qualms. They knew that Austria (supported for 
defensive purposes by Prussia) was at that time on the point 
of joining her arms to those of the Western Powers; and they 
could not but know that if the French and English armies were 
to be withdrawn from the main land of Europe in order to in- 
vade the Crimea, the wholesome union of the Four Powers 
would of necessity be weakened. ‘The Prime Minister was he 
who loved peace so fondly that, though peace was no more, he 
had hardly yet been torn from her cold embrace ; and though 
he lived under a belief that the military strength of the Czar 
was beyond measure vast, yet of the twelve months which 
Russia gave him for preparation he had only used three.} 
Having the heaviness of these thoughts on his mind, he saw it 
declared aloud that the country of which he happened to be 
the Prime Minister could not well do otherwise than invade 
the Russian dominions. To a prudent man the measure might 


1 Computing from the time when the Czar’s determination to seize the 
Principalities was known to our Government. If the computations are to 
be made from the time when the hostile character of Prince Mentschikoff’s 
mission became known, several months more would have to be added. See 
Lord Aberdeen’s evidence before the Sebastopol Committee. 


366 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. (Cuap. XXXL 


seem to be rash. To a good man, impressed with horror of 
war, it might even seem to be very wicked, for it was a violent 
revival of a war which, unless this new torch were thrown, 
would expire of its own accord. But the print was clear; hke 
stern Anangkie it pressed upon feeble man’s volition, for it was 
not to be construed away; and if an anxious Minister went 
back and looked again to see whether by chance he could find 
some loop in the wording, and whether possibly he might be 
able to fulfill his duty without. besieging Sebastopol, he was 
met by the careful negation which taught him im four plain 
words that he could fulfill it ‘ by no other means.’ 

Before the seventh day from the manifesto of the 15th, the 
country had made loud answer to the appeal, and on the 22nd 
of June the great newspaper, informed with the.deep will of 
the people, and taking little account of the fears of the prudent 
and the scruples of the good, laid it down that ‘Sebastopol was 
‘the keystone of the arch which spanned the Enxine, from the 
‘mouths of the Danube to the confines of Mingrelia,’ and that 
‘a successful enterprise against the place was the essential con. 
‘dition of permanent peace.’ And although this appeal was 
fo mded in part upon a false belief—a belief that the siege of 
Siistria had been raised—it seemed as though all mankind 
were making haste to adjust the world to the newspaper, for 
within twenty hours from the publication of the 22nd of June, 
truth obeyed the voice of false rumors, and followed in the 
wake of ‘The Times.”? 

Of course there were those who saw great. obstacles in the 
way of the proposed invasion, and they said that since Russia 
was a first-rate military Power, it must be rash to invade her 
territory, and to-besiege her proudest fortress, without first 
gaining some safe knowledge of the enemy’s strength. But 
the narrative then coming home in fragments from the valley 
of the Danube was heating the minds of the people in En- 

land. | 
4 When first England learned that the Turks were to be be- 
sieged in their fortress of Silistria by a great Russian army 
under the renowned Paskievitch, few believed that the issue 
was doubtful, or even that the contest could be long sustained. 


But as soon as it became known that day after day the mili- . 


tary strength of the Czar was exerted against the place with 
a violent energy, and that every attack was fiercely resisted, 
and always as yet with success, our people began to give their 
heart to the struggle; and their eagerness. rose. into zeal when 


1 The siege, as we saw above, was raised early in the morning of the 23rd. 


4 


Cuap. XXXL.J INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 367 


they heard that two young English travelers had thrown them- 
selves into the fortress, were heading the Turkish soldiery, and 
were maintaining the conflict by day and by night. 

The English were not of such a mettle as to be able to hear 
of tidings like these without growing more and more eager for 
warlike adventure. And im their hearts they liked the fact that 
the few young English travelers who helped to save Silistria and 
to turn away the war from the Danube were men who did these 
things of their own free will and pleasure, without the sanction 
of the public authorities; for our people are accustomed to 
think more highly of their fellow-countrymen individually than 
they do of our State machinery, and they can easily bear to see 
their Government in default, and can even smile at its awk- 
wardness, if all the shortcomings of office are effectually com- 
pensated by the vigor of private enterprise. Nasmyth has 
passed away from.us. I knew him in the Crimea. He was a 
man of quiet and gentle manners, and so free from vanity, so 
free from all idea of self-gratulation, that he always seemed as 
though he were unconscious of having stood as he did in the 
path of the Czar, and had really omitted to think of the share 
which he had had in changing the course of events; but it 
chanced that he had gone to the seat of war in the service of 
‘The Times,’ and naturally the lustre of his achievement was 
in some degree shed upon the keen, watchful Company which 
had had the foresight to send him at the right moment into 
the midst of events on which the fate of Russia was hanging ; 
for, whilst the State armies of France and England were as yet 
only gathering their strength, ‘ The Times’ was able to say that 
its own officer had confronted the enemy upon the very ground 
he most needed to win, and helped to drive him back from the 
Danube in great discomfiture. 

Thus day after day, in that month of June, the authority of 
The Govern. the Newspaper kept gaining and gaining upon the 
ment yields. ()yeen’s Government, and if Lord Aberdeen had 
any remaining unwillingness to renew the war by undertaking 
an invasion of Russia, his power of controlling the course of. 
the Government seems to have come to its end in the interval 
between the 23rd and the 27th of June. He continued to be 
the Prime Minister. His personal honor stood so high that 
no man attributed his continuance in office to other than 
worthy and unselfish motives ; but, for those who lay stress 
upon the principle that office and power ought not to be put 
asunder, it was irksome to have to mark the difference between 
what the Prime Minister was believed to desir e, and what he 
was now consenting to do. 


368 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXL 


Parliament was sitting, and it might be imagined that there 
No good stand WaS Something to say against the plan for invading 
made in Par- a province of Russia at a moment when all the main 
lament : oy ake 
against the in- Causes of the dispute were vanishing; but the same 
if ea causes which I have spoken of as paralyzing all re- 
sistance to the beginning of the war now hindered every at- 
tempt to withstand its renewal, for the orators who were be- 
lieved to be tainted with the doctrines of the Peace Party 
were still lying under the ban which they had brought upon 
themselves by their former excesses of language. So now 
again in June, as before at the opening of the session, the 
counsels of these eloquent men were lost to the world. They 
became as powerless as the Prime Minister, and the cause 
which they represented was so utterly brought to ruin that 
the popular demand for an invasion, which carried with it the 
virtual renewal of an otherwise expiring war, had the sound 
of that voice with which a nation speaks when the people are 
of one mind. 

So now, in presenting to his colleagues this his favorite 
scheme of an enterprise against Sebastopol, the Duke of New- 
castle was upheld — nay, was urged and driven forward — by 
forces so overwhelming, that scruples, and objections, and fears 
were carried away as by a flood; and when it was proposed 
in the Cabinet to go and fetch, as it were, a new war by un- 
dertaking this bold adventure, there was not one Minister pres« 
ent who refused to give his consent. 

Forthwith the Duke of Newcastle announced the decision 
Preparation of Of the Government to the General commanding the 
the instruc- = English army in Bulgaria. He did this by a pri- 
ions addressed ° 
to Lord Rag- Vate letter written on the 28th of June,! and near- 
Be ly at the same time he prepared the draught of a 
Dispatch! which was to convey to the English head-quarters, 
in full detail and in official form, the deliberate instructions of 
the Queen’s Government. This paper was to be the instru- 
ment for meting out to the General in command the allowance 
of discretion with which he was to be intrusted. A Dispatch 
recommending the expedition, but leaving to the General in 
command the duty of determining whether it could be pru- 
dently undertaken, would not have been followed by any in- 
vasion of the Crimea; and that which brought about the event 
was — not the decision of the Cabinet already mentioned, but 
—the peculiar stringency of the language which was to convey 
it to the English head-quarters.?_ It therefore seems right to 


! The contents.of this will be given in another chapter. 
* The truth of this statement will be shown, as I think, in a future chapter, 


Cuap. XXXI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 369 


speak of what passed when the terms of this cogent Dispatch 
were adopted by Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet. 

The Duke of Newcastle so framed the draught as to make 
it the means of narrowing very closely the discretion left to 
Lord Raglan; and it was to be expected that the Duke might 
wish his Dispatch to stand in this shape, because he was eager 
for the undertaking, and very willing to bear upon his own 
shoulders a large share of the responsibility which it entailed ; 
but it is difficult to believe that all the other members of the 
Government could have intended to place the English General 
under that degree of compulsion which is implied by the tenor 
of the instructions. It is certain, however, that the paper was 
well fitted to elicit at once the objections of those who might 
be inclined to disapprove it on account of its cogency, for it 
confined the discretion to be left to the General with a preci- 
sion scarcely short of harshness. 

The Duke of Newcastle took the Dispatch to Richmond, for 
there was to be a meeting of the members of the Cabinet at 
Pembroke Lodge, and he intended to make this the occasion 
for submitting the proposed instructions to the judgment of 
his colleagues. It was evening, a summer evening, and all the 
members of the Cabinet were present when the Duke took out 
-the draught of his proposed dispatch and began ta read it. 
Then there occurred an incident, very trifling in itself, but yet 
sO momentous in its consequences that, if it had happened in old 
times, it would have been attributed to the direct intervention 
of the immortal Gods. In these days, perhaps the physiologist 
will speak of the condition into which the human brain is nat- 
_ urally brought when it rests after anxious labors, and the ana- 
lytical chemist may regret that he had not an opportunity of 
testing the food of which the Ministers had partaken, with a 
view to detect the presence of some narcotic poison; but no 
well-informed person will look upon the accident as character- 
istic of the men whom it befell, for the very faults, no less than 
the high qualities of the statesmen composing Lord Aber- 
deen’s Cabinet were of such a kind as to secure them against 
the imputation of being careless and torpid. However, it is 
very certain that, before the reading of the paper had long 
continued, all the members of the Cabinet except a small mi- 
nority were overcome with sleep.!. For a moment the noise 
of a tumbling chair disturbed the repose of the Government ; 
but presently the Duke of Newcastle resumed the reading of 
his draught, and then again the fated sleep descended upon 


and, indeed, it is well enough proved by the tenor of Lord Raglan’s reply to 
the dispatch, t 1 See Note in the Appendix. 
Qe 


370 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA,  [Cuap. XXXII. 


the eyelids of Ministers. Later in the evening, and in another 
room, the Duke of Newcastle made another and a last effort 
to win attention to the contents of the draught, but agam a 
blissful rest (not, this time, actual sleep) interposed between 
Ministers and cares of State, and all, even those who from the 
first had remained awake, were in a quiet, assenting frame of 
mind. Upon the whole, the Dispatch, though it bristled with 
sentences tending to provoke objection, received from the Cab- 
inet the kind of approval which is often awarded to an unob- 
jectionable sermon. Not a letter of it was altered; and it 
will be seen by-and-by that that cogency in the wording of 
the Dispatch, which could hardly have failed to provoke ob- 
jection from an awakened Cabinet, was the very cause which 
governed events. 

The instructions addressed ‘from Paris to the French com- 
Instructions mander did not urge him to propose the invasion 
sent tthe of the Crimea, nor even to lend the weight of his 
mander, opinion to the proposed enterprise, but they for- 
bade. him from advancing toward the Danube. If it should 
be clear that the English were willing to undertake the expe 
dition to the Crimea, then the French Commander was not to 
be at liberty to hold back.’ 


* 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


At the time when the instructions from the Home Govern- 
The Allies at Ments reached the camp of the Allies, the generals 
Varna. Their were preparing for an active campaign in Bulgaria, 
state of prepa- 
ration inthe and Marshal ‘St. Arnaud had around him, in the 
middle ofJuly. neighborhood of Varna, or moving thither, four 
strong divisions of infantry, with cavalry and. field-artillery. 
He had no siege train. 

Lord Raglan had around him four divisions of infantry, the 
greater part of a division of cavalry, and of his field-artillery 
seven batteries. He had also on board ship off Varna the half 
of a battering train, and the other half was nearly ready to be 
dispatched from England. 

The French Marshal was receiving and expecting constant 
additions to his force, and Lord Raglan had been apprized that 


' I deduce this conclusion in an inferential way, from the general tenor 
of the materials at my command, and not from any one document distinctly 
warranting the statement. 


Cuar. XXXII.]) INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, | 371k 


a reserve division of infantry under Sir George Cathcart 
would speedily reach the Bosphorus. 

So long as the French and English forces remained camped 
in the neighborhood of Varna, their command of the sea-com- 
munication insured to them the arrival of the supplies which 
were sent to them; but the means of land-transport were not 
yet within their reach. It was estimated that, in order to 
move effectively in the interior, the English army alone would 
require pack-horses or mules to the number of 14,000, To ob- 
tain these was difficult, but not impossible; and, at the time to 
which we point, about 5000 had been collected. By a contin- 
uance of these exertions in Bulgaria, and by due activity in for- 
warding munitions and stores from England, it is probable that 
the English force, after a farther interval of about six weeks 
or two months, might have been prepared to move as an army 
carrying on regular operations; but of course this would only 
be true upon the supposition that the army should always 
march through countries yielding sufficient forage. 

The preparations of the French were not, perhaps, quite so 
far advanced as our own; but it is probable that the two ar- 
mies would have been found ready at about the same time for 
an active campaign in Bulgaria. 

The ships of the Allied Powers were at hand, and their 
Theireom.  eets had dominion over all the Kuxine home to 
mandofthe the Straits of Kertch. They had the command of 
5 the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles, the Mediterranean, 
of the whole ocean; and of all the lesser seas, bays, gulfs, and 
straits, from the Gut of Gibraltar to within sight of St. Peters- 
burg. The Czar’s Black Sea fleet existed, but existed in close 
durance, shut up under the guns of Sebastopol. 

In the matter of gaining information respecting the enemy’s 
Information resources, our Foreign Office had not been idle; 
obtained by and a great deal of material, bearing upon this vital 
OMe nee ne business, had been carefully got together and col- 
Beciees of the lated. It resulted from these data, that, spread 

over vast space, Russia might nominally have un- 

der arms forces approaching to a million of men; but that the 
force in the Crim Chersonese, including the 17,000 men who 
formed the crews of the ships, did not at the highest estimate 
amount to more than 45,000; and that, although there were a 
few battalions which Russia might draw toward Sebastopol 
from her army of the Caucasus, she had no more speedy meth- 
od of largely re-enforcing the Crimea than by availing herself | 
of the troops then in retreat from the country of the Danube, 
and marching them round to Perekop by the northern shores 
of the Euxine. 


a» 


372 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ([Cwap. XXXIIT. 


Neither the ambassadors of France and England at Constan- 
Noinformation tinople, nor any of their generals or admirals, had 
obtainedinthe succeeded in obtaining for themselves any trust- 
oe worthy information upon this vitally momentous 
business. For their failure in this respect more blame attach- 
es upon the ambassadors than upon the military and naval 
commanders, because the ambassadors had been in the Levant 
during a period of many months, in which (since the war was 
impending, but not declared) they might have bought knowl- 
edge from Russian subjects without involving their informers 
in the perils of treason. The duty of gathering knowledge by 
clandestine means is one so repulsive to the feelings of an En- 
glish gentleman, that there is always a danger of his neglect- 
ing it or performing it ill. Perhaps no two men could be less 


fit for the business of employing spies than Lord Stratford and - 


Lord Raglan. More diligence might have been expected from 
the French, but they also had failed. Marshal St. Arnaud had 
heard a rumor that the force of the enemy in the Crimea was 
70,000; and Vice-Admiral Dundas had even received a state- 
ment that it amounted to 120,000. But these accounts were 
fables. In point of fact, the information obtained by our For- 
eign Office approached to near the truth, and the Duke of. 
Newcastle had the firmness—it was a daring thing to do, but 
it turned out that he was right—he had the firmness to press 
Lord Raglan to rely upon it.. It was natural, however, that a 
general who was within a few hours’ sail of the country which 
Lord Raglan he was to invade, and was yet unable to obtain 
foncelved that from it any, even slight, glimmer of knowledge, 
lutely without Should distrust information which had traveled 


thy informa, Found to him (through the aid of the Home Goy- 


tion. ernment) along the circumference of a vast circle ; 


and Lord Raglan certainly considered that, in regard to the 
strength of the enemy in the Crimea and the land defenses of 
Sebastopol, he was simply without knowledge. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


On the evening of the 13th of July Marshal St. Arnaud re- 


The instruc. Celved a telegraphic dispatch from his Government. 


tions forthe The dispatch had been forwarded by way of Bel- ~ 


i j a tk ty ° ° i . 
Crimea reach, grade, and was in cipher. The message came in 


the Allied an imperfect state. Part of it was intelligible, but 
oa the rest was beyond all the power of the decipher- 


> 


. 


.: 
Crap. XXXIILJ INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 37S 


er. Yet the interpreted symbols showed plainly that the whole 
message, if only it could be read, would prove to be one of 
deep import. It forbade Marshal St. Arnaud from making any 
advance toward the Danube, and told him to look to the event 
of his army being conveyed from Varna by the fleet. This 
was all that could be deciphered. There were the mystic let- 
ters and figures which laid down, as was surmised, the destiny 
of the Allied armies, and no one could read. At night Colo- 
nel Trochu came to Lord Raglan’s quarters, and communi- 
cated all that could be gathered from the telegraphic dispatch. 
The English General had just received the Duke of Newcas- 
tle’s letter of the 28th, but had not yet broken the seal of it. 
Now, however, Lord Raglan opened the letter, and in a few 
moments he was able to give M. Trochu the means of inferring 
the matter contained in the illegible part of his dispatch. Ap- 
parently it was the desire of both the Home Governments that 
the Allied commanders should prepare to make a descent upon 
the Crimea, and lay siege to Sebastopol. 

On the 16th of July the dispatch of the 29th of June was 
received at the English head-quarters; and a dispatch for- 
warded from Paris at nearly the same time reached the hands 
of Marshal St Arnaud. 

' Since the proposed expedition involved the employment of 
The men who POth land and sea forces, the duty of determining 
had to determ- upon the effect to be given to the instructions from 
ine upon the home devolyed upon those who had the command 
giventothe of the Anglo-French armies and fleets. ‘These were 
wnstructions- three: Marshal St. Arnaud (having Admiral Hame- 
lin under his orders), Lord Raglan, and Vice-Admiral Dundas. 

Marshal St. Arnaud had not weight proportioned to the 
Marshal st. Magnitude of his command. Reputed at first to be 
prasad daring even to the verge of rashness, we have seen 
him so cautioned and schooled into strategic prudence as to 
have determined to place hundreds of miles of territory, and 
even the great range of the Balkan, between the French and 
the Russians; and now, within the last week, he had been al- 
most’ reproved by his Government for want of enterprise. 
Colonel Trochu, admitted into consultation upon the most mo- 
mentous affairs, seemed to wield great authority. At Con- 
stantinople and at Varna, no less than in Paris, the Marshal had 


been made the victim of unsparing tongues. Indeed at this 


time two of his divisional generals openly indulged in merci- 
less invectives against their chief; and soldiers all know that 
general officer thus setting himself against the commander- 


—in-chief is never without a great following. Perhaps, as had 


2 
374 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, ([Cuapr, XXXUTD 


been at first supposed, it may have been true that boldness 
and craving for adventure were the true lines of the Marshal’s 
character; but, if that were so, his native ideas had been over- 
laid by much counsel and bent into unwonted shapes. After 
a while, as will be seen, his mind, fatigued by advice, and now 
and then broken down by bodily illness, began to lapse into 
a state which rendered him almost passive in very critical mo- — 
ments. Naturally, he had been cowed by the result of his en- 
deavors to have his own way against Lord Stratford and Lord 
Raglan. . He was without ascendency in the camp of the Al- 
lies. 

Colonel Trochu was a student of the principles applicable to 
formal inland warfare, and it was to be expected that the more 
the obstacles to the proposed undertaking were canvassed, the 
more likely it would be that he would throw the weight of 
his scientific advice into the negative scale. 

Upon the whole it resulted, from the composition of the va- 
rious forces acting upon the mind of M. St. Arnaud, that, what- 
ever opinion he might lean to, he was not strong enough to be 
able to act upon events. If the English should decide against 
the project, he would be well content, and perhaps much re- 
lieved. If, on the other hand, the English should press for its 
adoption, then the French Marshal would do his best to carry 
it to a good conclusion. 

The French fleet was commanded by Admiral Hamelin. It 
Admiral was understood that he disapproved the expedition, 
5 sag pies but he was under the orders of the chief who com- 
manded the land forces. 

It. was not at that time a part of the project to move any 
very large proportion of the Turkish army to the 
coast of the Crimea, and therefore the opinion of 
Omar Pasha would hardly become a governing ingredient in 
the counsels of the Allies. It was known, however, that he 
deprecated the proposed invasion. 

The English fleet was commanded by Vice-Admiral Dundas. 
Admiral Dun» Most of the Vice-Admiral’s latter years had been 
des. passed in political and official life, and it was by 
force of politics that he had now become troubled with the 
business of war; for his seat at the Admiralty Board, and his 
subsequent appointment in peace-time to the command of the 
Mediterranean fleet, were things which stood in the relation 
of cause and effect. He had not sought to return to scenes of 
naval strife, but the war overtook him in his marine retire- 
ment, converting his expected repose into anxious toil. He 
was an able, a steadfast, a genial man, and his square Scottish 


Omar Pasha. 


Cuar. XXXIII.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 8475 


head, and his rough, shrewd, good-humored eyebrows, had 
grown gray in the faithful service of a political party. By na- 
ture he was so stout-hearted that he could afford to give free, 
manly counsel without the least dread lest men should say he 
was too cautious. His habits as a working subordinate mem- 
ber of Government, and perhaps also his natural temperament, 
inclined him to take a homely view of questions, a view recom- 
mended by what men term ‘common sense. I am sure, 
though I never heard him say so, that he believed the war to 
be extremely foolish, and that the less there was of it, the bet- 
ter it would be for the Whigs and for all the rest of mankind. 
He spoke and went straightforward. He thoroughly disap- 
proved the project of invasion, and he said so in plain words. 
His opinion sprang—not from dread of peril to the forces 
which he himself commanded, but from anxiety —anxiety in 
every way honorable to him—for the safety of the English 
army. That that anxiety was altogether vain, or even that it 
was weakly founded, few men, speaking with the light of the 
past, will be ready to say. Still less will it be thought that 
the Vice-Admiral was wrong in giving bold expression to his 
views. 

Admiral Dundas’s command was of course independent of 
the general in command of the English army; but the feasibil- 
ity of the sea transit was not at “all in question,! and it was 
plain, therefore, that the decision would properly rest with 
those who were responsible for the direction of the land 
forces. “So, although he held stoutly to his own opinion, the 
Vice-Admiral did not fail to give assurance that, if the decision 
of the Generals should be in favor of undertaking the expedi- 
tion, they might rely upon the aid of the English ; fleet. 

There remained Lord Raglan: and now it is time to give 
the words of the instructions which had been ad- 
dressed to him, as we have already seen; by the 
Secretary of State. 

The private letter which was the forerunner of the detailed 
dispatch ran thus :— 

‘Since I last wrote to you, events unknown to you at the 
Theinstruee ‘date of these letters have been brought to us by 
tis address- ‘the telegraph, and the raising the siege of Silis- 
edtohimby , 
the Home tria, and the retreat of the Russian army across 
Government. «the: Danube (preparatory probably to a retreat 
‘across the Pruth), give an entirely new aspect to the war, and 


Lord Raglan. 


1 Dundas, I think, said fairly and bluntly that he could undertake to land 
the army on the coast of the Crimea, but not to supply it, nor to bring it 
back. 


376 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXIII, 


‘render it necessary at once to consider what shall be our next 
‘move. 

‘The Cabinet is unanimously of the opinion that, unless you 
‘and Marshal St. Arnaud feel that you are mot sufficiently pre- 
‘pared, you should lay siege to Sebastopol, as we are more than 
‘ever convinced that, without the reduction of this fortress and 
‘the capture of the Russian fleet, it will be impossible to con- 
‘clude an honorable and safe peace. The Emperor of the 
‘French has expressed his entire concurrence in this opinion, 
‘and, Z believe, has written privately to the Marshal to that ef- 
‘fect. Ishall submit to the Cabinet a dispatch to you on this 
‘subject, and if it is approved you may expect it by the next 
‘mail. In the mean time I[ hope you will be turning over in 
‘your own mind, and considering with your French colleague, 
‘what it will be safe and advisable to do.’! 

So far as it related to the expedition which the Allies under- 
took, the promised dispatch was in these words :— 


* Secret. 
‘War Department, 29th June, 1854. 


‘My Lorp,—In my dispatch of the 10th April, marked “ Se- 
‘cret,” I directed your Lordship to make careful inquiry into 
‘the amount and condition of the Russian force in the Crimea, 
‘and the strength of the fortress of Sebastopol. 

‘At the same time I pointed out to your Lordship that, 
‘whilst it was your first duty to prevent, by every means in 
‘your power, the advance of the Russian army on Constanti- 
‘nople, supposing any such intention to exist, it might become 
‘essential for the attainment of the objects of the war to un- 
‘dertake operations of an offensive character, and that the 
‘heaviest blow which could be struck at the southern extrem- 

‘ities of the Russian empire would be the taking or destruction 

‘of Sebastopol. The events which have recently occurred, and 

‘which have become known to Her Majesty’s Government by 
‘means of the telegraph from Belgrade—the gallant and suc- 

‘cessful resistance of the Turkish army, the raising of the siege 

‘of Silistria, the retreat of the Russian army across the Dan- 

‘ube, and the anticipated evacuation of the Principalities— 
‘have given a new character to the war, and will render it 
‘necessary for you without delay to concert measures with 
‘Marshal St. Arnaud, and with Admirals Dundas and Hamelin, 
‘suited to the circumstances in which these events have placed 
‘the Allied forces. 


' Private letter from the Duke of Newcastle to Lord Raglan, dated 28th 
June, 1854. 


Cuar, XXXIIJ.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 307 


‘The safety of Constantinople from any invasion of the Rus- 
‘sian army is now, for a time at least, secured, and the advance 
‘of the English and French armies to Varna and Prayadi has 
‘succeeded in its object, without their being called upon to 
“meet the enemy in action. 

‘ Any farther advance of the Allied armies should on no ac- 
‘count be contemplated. To occupy the Dobrutscha would 
‘be productive of no beneficial results, and would be fatally 
‘prejudicial to the health of the troops; and even if the Rus- 
‘sian army should not recross the Pruth, but continue in the 
‘occupation of the Principalities, it is the decided opinion of 
‘Her Majesty’s Government that, for the present at least, no 

measures should be taken by you to dislodge them. 

‘The circumstances anticipated in my dispatch before re- 
‘ferred to have, therefore, now arrived ; and I have, on the part 
‘of Her Majesty’s Government, to instruct your Lordship to 
‘concert measures for the siege of Sebastopol, unless, with the 
‘information in your possession, but at present unknown in this 
‘country, you should be decidedly of opinion that it could not 
‘be undertaken with a reasonable prospect of success. The 
‘confidence with which Her Majesty placed under your com- 
‘mand the gallant army now in Turkey is unabated; and if, 
‘upon mature reflection, you should consider that the united 
‘strength of the two armies is insufficient for this undertaking, 
‘you are not to be precluded from the exercise of the discre- 
‘tion originally vested in you, though Her Majesty’s Govern- 
‘ment will learn with regret that an attack from which such 
‘important consequences are anticipated must be any longer 
‘delayed. 

‘The difficulties of the siege of Sebastopol appear to Her 
‘Majesty’s Government to be more likely to increase than di- 
‘minish by delay; and as there is no prospect of a safe and 
‘honorable peace until the fortress is reduced, and the fleet tak- 
‘en or destroyed, it is, on all accounts, most important that 
‘nothing but insuperable impediments—such as the want of 
‘ample preparations by either army, or the possession by Rus- 
‘sia of a force in the Crimea greatly outnumbering that which 
*can be brought against it—should be allowed to prevent the 
‘early decision to undertake these operations. 

‘This decision should be taken solely with reference to the 
‘means at your disposal, as compared with the difficulties to 
‘be overcome. 

‘It is probable that a large part of the Russian army now 
‘retreating from the 'Turkish territory may be poured into the 
‘Crimea to re-enforce Sebastopol. If orders to this effect have 


378 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXIII, 


‘not already been given, it is farther probable that such a 
‘measure would be adopted as soon as it is known that the 
‘ Allied armies are in motion to commence active hostilities. 
‘ As all communications by sea are now in the hands of the 
‘ Allied Powers, it becomes of importance to endeavor; to cut 
‘off all communication by land between the Crimea and the 
‘other parts oft the Russian dominions. 
oo 


* x * * * 
* * * * * * 
* * * * * * * 
* * * * * ok 


‘It is unnecessary to express any opinion, at this distance 
‘from the scene, as to the mode in which these operations 
‘should be conducted, or the place at which a disembarkation 
‘should be effected ; and. as the latter will, of course, be de- 
‘cided with the advice and assistance of the French and En- 
‘olish Admirals, it is equally unnecessary to impress upon your 
‘Lordship the importance of selecting favorable weather for 
‘the purpose, and avoiding all risks of being obliged by storms 
‘to withdraw from the shore the vessels of war and transports, 
‘when only a pat tial landing of the tr oops has been effected. 


* # * * 
* * * * Bs * * 
* * * * * * * 
* i tite * * * * * 


‘IT have only farther to express to you, on the part of Her 
* Majesty’ s Government, their entire reliance in your judgment, 
‘zeal, and discretion ; and their conviction that, while you will 
‘not expose the army under your command to unnecessary 
‘risk, you will not forget that to the gallantry and conduct of 
‘your troops their countrymen are now looking to secure, by 
‘the blessing of Providence, the great object of a just war, the 
‘vindication of national rights, and the future security of the 
‘peace of Kurope. 
‘T have the honor to be, my Lord, your Lordship’s obedient, 
‘humble servant, NEWCaAsTLE. 
‘General the Lord Raglan, G. C. B., &c,, &e., &e.’ 


In common circumstances, and especially where the whole 
Extremestrin. Of the troops to be engaged are under one com- 
gency ofthe mander, it can not be right for any sovereign or 
insumuctons. “any minister to address such instructions as these 
to a general on a distant shore; for the general who is to be 
intrusted with the sole command of a great expedition must 
be, of all mankind, the best able to judge of its military pru- 


Cuar. XXXIIT.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 879 


dence; and to give him orders thus cogent is to dispense with 
his counsel. 

But in this war, the united forces of France and England 
Considerations Were under two commanders; and, besides, since 
eee aaa, the expedition was dependent upon naval co-opera- 
gency. tion, the admirals of the two fleets would necesari- 
ly be taken into council. It is true that the French admiral 
was under the orders of Marshal St. Arnaud, but there was no 
corresponding arrangement in regard to the English services, 
and our admiral’s command was independent of the general 
commanding the land forces. 

Thus, it seemed to the Home Government that the question, 
if left to be decided on the shores of the Black Sea, would have 
to be weighed, not by one commander, but by a council of at 
least four, and to be actually decided by a council of not less 
than three; and it would scarcely be expected that such a 
body, deliberating freely, would come to that vigorous decision 
which might easily, perhaps, be attained by any one of them 
singly. On the other hand, the two Governments were per- 
fectly agreed. Upon the whole, therefore, there was some 
ground for resolving to transmit to the camps at Varna the 
benefit of that concord which reigned between Paris and Lon- 
don, and to subject the generals and admirals to the overrul- 
ing judgment of the authorities at home. 

Again, the chief reason which makes it unwise to fetter the 
discretion of generals—namely, the superior knowledge which 
they are supposed to have of the enemy’s strength and of the 
field of operations—was, in this instance, wanting ; for the gen- 
erals in the camp at Varna had absolutely no trustworthy in- 
formation except what came to them from Paris or London; 
and, in their power of testing the statements which reached 
them in this way, they were below the Home Governments, 
for they did not so well know the sources from which the ac- 
counts were drawn. 

Justice requires that these considerations should have their 
weight, for they tend,in some measure, to explain the extreme 
stringency of the instructions. ‘The Minister who framed them 
had determined, with a boldness very rare in modern times, to 
take upon himself an immense weight of responsibility ; and, 
having brought himself to this strong resolve, he rightly and 
‘generously did all he could to simplify the task of the general 
whom he ventured to direct, and to make the path of duty 
seem clear, 

But Lord Raglan had a station in the allied camp which 
made it- very difficult for the Home Government to take his 


380 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXIII 


The power of burden upon themselves by any mere bold form of 
seainctihe es, Words. He commanded the land forces, but he was 


pedition be- — Glothed with a power of older date than the Queen’s 
comes practic- 34 . . 

ally vestedin COMMission. He had been privy to the business 
Ford Keglan’ of the wars which England waged in the great 
eine days; and, if he had seen how Wellington ordered 
affairs in the field, he had witnessed, too, his endurance, and 
helped him in the patient, unapplauded toil by which he pre- 
pared the end. Men serving under Lord Raglan were none 
of them blind to-the distance which history herself interposed 
betwixt their general and themselves. There were none near 
the chief who would not feel bitter pain if they imagined that 
words or acts of theirs had thrown upon his face a shadow of 
displeasure. There were no men near him who would not fly 
with alacrity to execute his slightest wish. The ascendency 
of the English General over his own people could not but reach 
into the French camp. Upon the whole, Lord Raglan had so 
great an authority in the camp of the Allies, and amongst pub- 
lic men in England, that, if he had taken upon himself to resist 
the pressure of the Secretary of State, he would not have been 
left without support. On the other hand, if he should determ- 
ine to follow the will of the Home Government, he would car- 
ry the French Marshal with him. So, in effect, the power of 
deciding for or against the expedition had passed from Paris 
and from London, and was all concentred in the English Gen- 
eral. 

Of the general officers in the English camp there was one 
Lord Raglan's Whom Lord Raglan had always been anxious to 
deliberations. have near at hand. This was Sir George Brown. 
He was a Scotsman, 66 years old,-and had served with a great 
repute for his daring forwardness in some of the most bloody 
scenes of the Peninsular war. He was of an eager, fiery na- 
ture, and devoted to the calling of a soldier. After the peace 
of 1815 he began to hold office in the general staff of the army 
at_ the Horse-Guards, and in time he became adjutant-general. 
He now commanded the Light Division. His zeal, and his 
lengthened toils in the adjutant-general’s office, had drawn him 
too far in a narrow path, and he overplied the idea of disci- 
pline, but he abounded in energy, and he was in many respects 
an accomplished soldier. He wrote on military subjects with 
clearness, with grace, and seemingly with a good deal of ease. 

After receiving the Duke of Newcastle’s dispatch, Lord Rag- 
We requests the 140 sent for Sir George Brown, and expressed to 
opinion of Sir_ him a wish to have his opinion about it. He hand- 
George Brown. eq the paper to Sir George across the table, and 


 Cuap. XXXJIL] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 381 


then went on with his writing, leaving Sir George to consider 
its contents at his leisure. When he had read it, Lord Raglan 
asked him to give him his opinion. Before giving it, Sir George 
naturally inquired what information Lord Raglan had obtain- 
ed in regard to the strength of Sebastopol, and what force he 
expected might be opposed to him in the Crimea. 

Lord Raglan’s answer was that he had no information what- 
ever; that neither he nor Marshal St. Arnaud knew what 
amount of force the enemy had there; that they believed and 
hoped there might not be more than 70,000 men in the penin- 
sula; but that, in fact, it had not been blockaded, and that no 
means had been taken to procure information, and that there- 
fore they did not in reality know they might not be opposed 
by 100,000 men or even more. 

Then Sir George Brown said, ‘ You and I are accustomed, 
‘when in any great difficulty, or when any important question 
‘is proposed to us, to ask ourselves how the Great Duke would 
‘have acted and decided under similar circumstances. Now, 
‘I tell your Lordship that, without more certain information 
‘than you appear to have obtained in regard to this matter, 
‘that great man would not have accepted the responsibility of 
‘undertaking such an enterprise as that which is now proposed 
‘to you! But, notwithstanding that consideration, I am of 
‘opinion that you had better accede to the proposal, and come 
‘into the views of the Government, for this reason, that it is 
‘clear to me, from the tenor of the Duke of Newcastle’s letter, 
‘that they have made up their minds to it at home, and that, 
‘if you decline to accept the responsibility, they will send some 
‘one else out to command the army, who will be less scrupu- 
‘lous and more ready to come into their plans.’ 

This suggestion did not at all govern Lord Raglan’s deci- 
Lord Raglan's sion. At the time he disclosed no opinion of his 
determination. gwn ; but he soon made up his mind. His decision 
was governed by views which must be explained. He believed 
that the enterprise was one of a very hazardous kind, and was 
not warranted by any safe information concerning the state of 
the enemy’s forces. Having that conviction, why did he not 
feel bound to assert it, notwithstanding the urgency of the 
The grounds Lome Government? Lord Raglan was, as might 
on which it be supposed, deeply imbued with reverence for the 
ah authority of the Duke of Wellington, and, rightly 
interpreted, that authority is surely the safest onide that an 
English general can follow. But there is a certain danger in 
the precepts of the Great Duke, unless when they are con- 

strued down to their right degree of significance by applying 


382 - INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuav. XXXII. 


to them the splendid context of his deeds; for he was accus- 
tomed to use sayings founded on quaint and very literal read- 
ings of our English law, and the loyalty of his nature rose so 
high above the reach of all cavil, that the maxims which he ut- 
tered seemed to give a noble simplicity to the tenor of his pub- 
lic life, though in reality he rarely or never permitted them to 
derange his policy, still less to confuse him in the management 
of war. Naturally, therefore, men were in danger of being 
misled by a too narrow reading of his precepts. Now, one of 
the Duke’s theories was, that an officer commanding an army 
on foreign service owed obedience to the Secretary of State— 
obedience close akin to that which a military subordinate owes 
to his military chief. If this precept were to be narrowly con- 
strued, a Secretary of State who conveyed the wishes of the 
Government to a general commanding forces abroad would be 
in danger of finding that he had shut out from his counsels the 
one man in all the world who could best advise him, and the 
relations of the Austrian generals with the old Aulic Council 
at Vienna would have to be adopted as a guide, instead of be- 
ing valued as a warning. Against this doctrine, understood in 
its narrow sense, the Duke of Wellington’s whole military ca- 
reer in Europe was an almost unceasing rebellion; and it 
would be hard to find an instance in which he suffered his de- 
signs to be bent awry by the military opinions of the Home 
Government. During the Peninsular war he did not surely 
pass his time in obeying the Home Government, but rather in 
setting it right, and in educating it, if so one may speak, for 
the business of carrying on war.! 

It is known, however, that Lord Raglan accepted the Great 
Duke’s precept without much qualification, and, when he ap- 
plied it to the dispatch which had come to him from the Sec- 
retary of State, he saw, as he believed, where the path of duty 
lay. For now, in all its potency, the strange sleep which had 


' The fierce, willful, and contemptuous way in which the Duke of Wel- 
lington dealt with a Secretary of State who ventured to think he might take 
him at his word, and make him obey his wish, must be familiar to every 
reader of the Dispatches; but I may refer to the specimen which will be 
found in Sir Arthur Wellesley’s letter to Lord Castlereagh of the 5th of Sep- 
tember, 1808. I mean the passage beginning, ‘In respect to your wish that 
‘I should go into the Asturias, to examine the country and form a judgment 
‘of its strength, I have to mention to you that I am not a draughtsman.’ It 
happened that just six days before, namely, on the 30th of August, Sir Ar- 
thur had addressed to the same Secretary of State his customary professions 
of obedience: ‘I shall do whatever the Government may wish ;’ but he never 
thought of suffering himself to be hindered from penning an angry refusal on 
the 5th of September merely because he had used a submissive phrase on the 
30th of August. 


Cuar. XXXIII.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 383 


come upon the Cabinet on the 28th of June began to tell upon 
events. -But for this, or some like physical cause, it could 
hardly have chanced that fifteen men, all gifted with keen in- 
tellect, and all alike charged with a grave, nay, an almost sol- 
emn duty, would have knowingly assented to the draught of a 
long and momentous dispatch, without seeking to wedge into 
it some of those qualifying words which usually correct the 
imprudence and derange the grammatical structure of writings 
framed in Council. A few qualifying words of this sort would 
have enabled Lord Raglan to act upon his own opinion. But 
the tranquil mood of the Cabinet on the evening of the 28th 
of June had prevented the mutilation of the dispatch; and it 
retained so perfectly all that bold singleness of purpose which 
characterized the mind of the framer, that it virtually directed 
the English General to undertake the invasion, unless it should 
happen that he had obtained fresh knowledge of the enemy’s. 
strength—fresh knowledge of such a kind as would enable him 
to controvert the statements sent out to him by the Home 
Government, and say distinctly that the Russian forces in the 
Crimea were too numerous to be encountered with common 
prudence by the Allied armies. Now, Lord Raglan had not 
succeeded in obtaining any information at all on the subject, 
and, therefore, the one circumstance which might have relaxed 
the stringency of the dispatch was entirely wanting. In the 
state of things which actually existed, the Duke of Newcastle’s 
communication was little short of an absolute order from the 
Secretary of State. The English General determined to obey it. 
It was thus that Lord Raglan persuaded himself into the be- 
lief that he would be justified in foregoing his own opinion, 
and acceding to the will of the Home Government; but per- 
haps, though he knew it not, he was under the power of a mo- 
tive more heating than this bare process of the reason. There 
were sentences in the dispatch which seemed as though they 
were meant for the guidance of one not sufficiently prone to 
action. The writer seemed to have busied himself in closing 
the loops by which a general might seek to escape from the 
obligation of haying to make the venture. In reality, as we 
have seen, the dispatch had been framed with a view of giving 
unanimity to a council of generals and admirals, but 1t reached 
its destination at atime when (for the purpose of this decision) 
the whole power of the camp at Varna was centred in the En- 
glish General. Whether meant for the guidance of a council 
or not, the dispatch was addressed to one man; and that man 
was Lord Raglan. Some may deem it wrong, and may call it 
a plan of life too closely deriving from times of chivalry ; but 


384 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ([Cuar. XXXIII. 


it is still the habit of the English gentleman to think that his 
personal honor is no part of the property of the state; and that 
even for what may seem the public good he ought not to do a 
violence to his self-respect. He has his code formed in the 
time of his boyish conflicts or of his early manhood; and if 
there be fire and strength in his nature, he will not depart from 
it merely because he has become responsible and mature in 
years. Lord Raglan was of the bodily nature of those whose 
blood flushes hot to the face under the sting of an indignant 
thought; and if mortal eyes could have looked upon him when 
he revolved the contents of the dispatch, they would have seen 
him turn crimson in poising the question whether he ought to 
resist the pressure of the Queen’s Government, and to resist 
because of mere danger. What the Duke of Newcastle meant 
was to do all he reasonably could to enforce the invasion ; and, 
so intending, he did honestly in making his order as peremp- 
tory as possible; but if in any times to come it shall be intend- 
ed that an English General commanding on a foreign service 
is to exercise his judgment freely and without passion, the Sec- 
retary of State must not challenge him as Lord Raglan was 
challenged by the dispatch of the 29th of June. 

Lord Raglan’s decision governed the counsels of the Allied 
His decision camp; for, although the staff of the French army? 
Feed ye (including, as I believe, M. St. Arnaud himself) were 
Allies. adverse to the undertaking, the Marshal’s instruc- 
tions were so framed, that, if the English should be ready to 
go forward, he was virtually ordered to concur in the enter- 
prise ;? and we have seen that he had not such a weight in the 
French camp as would have enabled him to oppose any valid 
resistance to the wishes of his own Government and the de- 
termination of the English General. | 

In announcing his decision to the Home Government, Lord 
Raglan thus wrote to the Duke of Newcastle :— 

‘It becomes my duty to acquaint you that it was more in 
He announces - &eference to the views of the British Government 
it to the Home ‘as conveyed to me in your Grace’s dispatch, and 

' ‘to the known acquiescence of the Emperor Louis 
‘ Napoleon in those views, than to any information in the pos- 
‘session of the naval and military authorities, either as to the 
‘extent of the enemy’s forces, or their state of preparation, that 
‘the decision to make a descent upon the Crimea was adopted. 


? This will be shown by the narrative in cap. 9, post. 

? Lord Raglan had the advantage of knowing (by means of a communica- 
tion from Lord Cowley) that the ‘Emperor quite concurred in the views of 
‘the British Cabinet.’ 


Cuap. XXXIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 385 


‘The fact must not be concealed that neither the English nor 
‘the French Admirals have been able to obtain any intelligence 
‘on which they can rely with respect to the army which the 
‘Russians may destine for operations in the field, or to the 
‘number of men allotted for the defense of Sebastopol; and 
‘Marshal St. Arnaud and myself are equally deficient in infor- 
‘mation upon these all-important questions, and there would 
‘seem to be no chance of our acquiring it.’! 

The Duke of Newcastle’s reply to this dispatch was in full 
consistency with that fearless and unshrinking assumption of 
responsibility which had marked his instructions of the 29th 
of June. 

‘I wish,’ he writes,? ‘ that circumstances which are engross- 
The Dake of | 12g my attention this afternoon permitted my ex- 
Neweastle's ‘pressing to you the feeling of intense anxiety and 
reply. ‘interest which your reply of the 19th of July to 
‘mine of the 29th of June have created in my mind. I can 
‘not help seeing, through the calm and noble tone of your an- 
‘nouncement of the decision to attack Sebastopol, that it has 
‘been taken in order to meet the views and desires of the Gov- 
“ernment, and not in entire accordance with your own opinions. 
‘God grant that success may reward you, and justify us! 

‘I wrote to the Queen the moment I received your dispatch, 
dhs boceat and in answer she said, “The very important news 
expression of ‘‘* which he conveyed to her in it of the decision 
Spline, ‘of the generals and admirals to attack Sevasto- 
“nol, have filled the Queen with mixed feelings of satisfaction 
‘*¢and anxiety. May the Almighty protect her army and her 
‘fleet, and bless this great undertaking with success !” 

‘Let me add my humble aspirations and prayers to those 
‘of our good Queen. The cause is a just one, if any war is 
‘just, and I will not believe that in any case British arms can 
‘fail. May honor, victory, and the thanks of a grateful world 
‘attend your efforts! God bless you and those who fight un- 
‘der you!’ 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


On the 18th of July a conference took place at Marshal St. 
Conference at ‘Stnaud’s head-quarters. It was attended by the 
the French. Marshal, by Lord Raglan, and by Admiral Hamelin, 
Be Regeln by Admiral Bruat. (who was the second in com- 


1 19th July. ~ ~? Private letter to Lord Raglan, 3rd August, 1854. 
Vor. L—R 


386 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XXXIV.) 


mand of the French fleet), by Vice-Admiral Bundas, and by 
Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, who was the second in com- 
mand of the English fleet. It lasted four hours. ; 

Perhaps most of the members of the conference imagined 
that they were met for the purpose of determining upon the 
expediency of undertaking the invasion; but Lord Raglan had 
already made up his mind, not merely to support the wish of 
his Government in the Allied camp, but to cause its actual 
adoption; and he was so constituted that he could bring the 
resources of his mind to bear upon the object in view with as 
much abundance and strength as if he had himself approved 
or even devised it. Clearly a discussion upon the expediency 
of undertaking the enterprise would have been fatal to it, for 
no member of the conference, except Lyons and (possibly) 
Bruat, could have conscientiously argued that the scheme was 
wise or even moderately prudent. How was it to be con- 
trived that a council of war disapproving the enterprise should 
be prevented from strangling it ? 

As almost always happened in conferences where Lord Rag- 
Lord Ragian's 122 had the ascendant, the grand question was quiet- 
way of eluding ly passed over, as though it were either decided or 
objections. conceded for the purpose of the discussion, and it 
was made to seem that the duty which remained to the coun- 
cil was that of determining the time and the means. The 
French had studied the means of disembarking in the face of 
a powerful enemy. Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s descent upon 
the coast of Egypt in the face of the Fiench aimy was an en- 
terprise too brilliant and too daring to allow of its being held 
a safe example, for he had simply landed his infantry upon the 
beach in boats, without attempting, in the first instance, to 
bring artillery into action. It seems that hardly any stress of 
circumstances will induce a French general to bring his in- 
fantry into action upon open ground without providing for it 
the support of artillery. Naturally, therefore, the French au- 
thorities at Varna were impressed with the necessity of being 
able to land their field-guns in such a way as to admit of their 
being brought into action simultaneously with the landing of 
their battalions; and, having anticipated some time before 
that a disembarkation in. the face of an enemy might be one 
of the operations of the war, they had already begun to make 
the boats required for the purpose. These were flat-bottomed 
lighters, somewhat in the form of punts, but of great size, and 
so constructed that they would receive the gun-carriages with 
the guns upon them, and allow of the guns being run out 
straight from the boat to the beach. It was understood that 


Cuarv. XXXIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 387 


the building of these flat lighters would take about ten days, 
and it was determined that in the mean time a survey of the 
coast near Sebastopol should be made from on board ship, in 
order to determine the spot best suited for a descent. 

With a view to cover the reconnaissance and draw off the 
Reconmais.  Chemy’s attention, the Allied admirals cruised with 
sance of the powerful fleets in front of the harbor of Sebastopol, 
Ya and meanwhile the officers chosen for the service 
went northward along the coast in the‘ Fury,’ seeking out the 
best place for alanding. The officers who performed this duty 
were, on the part of the French, General Canrobert and Colo- 
nel Trochu, with one engineer and one ar tillery officer; and, 
on the part of the English, Sir George Brown, Licut. -Colonel 
Lake, R.H.A., Captain Lovell, R.E., and Captain Wetherall, of 
the Quarter master General’s department. The ‘ Fury’ was 
steered by no common hand. 

In the moment when Lord Raglan determined to treat the 
instructions of the Government as imperative, and to put them 
in course for execution, he came to another determination (a 
determination which is not so mere a corollary from the first 
as men unversed in business may think): he resolved to carry 
the enterprise through. He knew that, though work of an ac- 
customed sort can be ably done by official persons acting un- 
der a bare sense of duty, yet that the engine for conquering 
obstacles of a kind not known beforehand, when they are 
many, and big, and unforeseen, must be nothing less than the 
strong, passionate will of a man. If every one were to per- 
form his mere duty, there would be no invasion of the Crimea, 
for a rank growth of hinderances springing up in the way of 
the undertaking would be sure to gather fast round it, and 
bring it in time to a stop. 

Amongst the English Generals there was no one who had 
Sir Edmund given his mind to the enigma which went by the 
Lyons. name of the ‘ Kastern Question ;’ ? but Sir Edmund 
Lyons had been for many years engaged in the animating di- 
plomacy of the Levant. In Greece, the activity of the Czar’s 
agents, or perhaps of his mere admirer s, had been so constant, 
and had generated so strong a spirit of antagonism in the 
minds of the few contentious Britons who chanced to observe 
it, that the institutions called ‘The Russian Party,’ and ‘The 
English Party,’ had long ago flourished at Athens ; and, since 
Sir Edmund Lyons had been aceredited there for several years 
as British Minister, he did not miss being drawn into the game 
of combating against. what was supposed to be the ever-im- 
pending danger of Russian encroachment. Long ago, there- 


388 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, ([CuHar. XXXIV. 


fore, he had been whetted for this strife; and now that the 
‘Eastern Question’ was to be brought to the issue of a war in 
which he had part, he was inflamed with a passionate zeal. 
Resuming at once the uniform and the bearing of his old pro- 
fession, he cast aside—if ever he had it—all semblance of dip- 
lomatic reserve and composure, and threw himself, with all his 
seaman’s heart, into the business of the war. 

Lord Raglan drew Sir Edmund Lyons into his intimate 
counsels. I know not whether this concord of theirs was ever 
put into words, but I imagine that at the least I can infer from 
their actions and from the tenor of their intercourse a silent 
understanding between them—an understanding that no luke- 
warmness of others, no shortcomings, no evasions, no tardy 
prudence, no overgrown respect for difficulty or peril, should 
hinder the landing of the Queen’s troops on the coast of the 
Crimea. From the time that Lord Raglan thus joined Lyons 
to the undertaking he gave it a great momentum. To those 
within the grasp of the Rear-Admiral’s energy it seemed that 
thenceforth, and until the troops should be landed on the ene- 
my’s shore, there could be no rest for man, no rest for engines. 
The ‘ Agamemnon’ was never still. In the painful, consuming 
passion with which Lyons toiled, and even, as some imagined, 
in the anxious, craving expression of his features, there was 
something which reminded men ofa greater name. 

This was the officer who steered the ‘Fury.’ He carried 
her in so close to the shore that the coast could be reconnoitred 
with great completeness. The officers came to the conclusion 
(a conclusion afterward overruled, as we shall see, by Lord 
Raglan) that the valley of the Katscha was the best spot for a 
landing. 

We saw that the Czar’s withdrawal from the Principalities 


Rumored would deprive the German Powers of their main 
he pr ground of quarrel with Russia, and that our plan 
Czar. of engaging in a great marine expedition against 


Crim Tartary would cause Austria and Prussia to despair of 
all effective support from the West, thus driving or tending to 
drive them into better relations with Nicholas. Before the 
28th of July there were signs that this change was beginning 
to set Russia free from the straits in which she had been 
placed by the unanimity of the Four Great Powers; and ti- 
dings which reached the camp at Varna made it appear (though 
not with truth) that the Russian commander had not only sus- 
pended his retreat, but was commencing a fresh movement in 
advance. To deliberate upon this supposed change in the 
character of the war, a conference was-held at the French: 


Cuap. XXXIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 889 


Second confer: head-quarters, and was attended by Marshal St. Ar- 
ence. naud, Lord Raglan, General Canrobert, Sir Edmund 
Lyons, General Martimprey, Sir George Brown, and Colonel 
Trochu. The French generals grasped this as an occasion for 
bringing about the relinquishment of an enterprise which they 
always had held to be rash. They submitted that the general 
instructions addressed to both of the Allied commanders made 
it their duty to provide in the first instance for the safety of 
the Ottoman territory, and that, until that object was secured, 
they were not warranted in attempting an invasion of a Rus- 
sian province far distant from the threatened frontier of Euro- 
pean Turkey ; that the order to invade the coast of the Crimea 
had been framed by the Home Governments and acceded to 
by the Allied Generals upon the assumption that the armed in- 
The French. terVention of Austria, then believed to be immi- 
ne Krencn é 
urge the aban- nent, or, at the very least, a continuance of her 
ctnelition ” Menacing attitude on the flank of the Russian army, 
against the would preclude any attempt by the Czar to resume 
hiya his war on the Danube; that that assumption now 
unfortunately turned out to be unfounded; and that the aban- 
donment by Austria of the common cause made it the bound- 
en duty of the Allied commanders to return to their defensive 
measures, because it was now plain that, if they quitted Bul- 
garia, Omar Pasha, without aid from any quarter, would have 
upon his hands the whole weight of the Russian army. Now 
then, supposing the premises to be conceded, the French coun- 
selors had made out good grounds for abandoning a resolu- 
tion which, only a week ago, had been adopted by the Allied 
commanders. 

Lord Raglan, however, was resolved that the enterprise 
Lord Ragian's Should go on. From the moment he knew that the 
way ofbending siege of Silistria had been raised, he never doubted 
ee blame. that, for that year at least, the invasion of European 
the English ‘T‘urkey was at an end. But he knew that clever 
Government. : Ae 

men who have taken the pains to build up a neat 
logical structure do not easily allow it to be treated as unsound 
merely because it rests upon a sliding foundation. Without, 
therefore, combating the French arguments, he quietly suggest- 
ed that the time which must needs elapse before the embarka- 
tion might throw new light on the probability of a renewed 
attack upon Turkey; and he proposed that, in the mean time, 
the preparations for the descent on the Crimea should be car- 
ried on with all speed. This opinion was adopted by every 
member of the conference. The preparations were carried on 
with increasing energy.; and the theory that it was the dntv 


390 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Cuap. XXXIV. 


of the Allied commanders to abandon the enterprise was never 
put down by argument, but left to die away uncontested. 

Lord Raglan had been struck with the value of the French 
plan for landing artillery on flat lighters, and Sir 
Kdmund Lyons and Sir George Brown were dis- 
patched to Constantinople with instructions to do all they could 
toward supplying the British army with means which would 
answer the same purpose. They discovered that a platform 
resting upon two boats might be made to serve nearly as well 
as one of the French lighters. How they toiled the world will 
never know, for History can not pause to see them ransacking 
Constantinople and the villages of the Bosphorus in their search 
after carpenters and planks; but before the appointed time the 
whole work was done. This was not all. Sir Edmund Lyons 
and Sir George Brown propelled the arrangements for buying 
and chartering steamers, tr ampling down “with firmness, per- 
haps one might say with violence, all obstacles which stood in 
the way. Of those obstacles one of the most formidable was 
what was called in those days the ‘ official fear of incurring re- 
sponsibility.’ Lyons and Sir George Brown taught men that in 
emergencies of this sort they should be pursued with the fear of 
not doing enough rather than with the dread of doing too much. 
‘I can not venture, ’ said a cautious official—‘ I can not venture 
to give the price. ‘Then I can,’ said Sir George Brown; ‘I 
buy itin my own name!’ It is thus that difficulties are con- 
quered. When the restless ‘ Agamemnon’ came back into the 
Bay of Varna with Lyons and Sir George Brown on board, 
Lord Raglan was at the head ofa truly British armament. He 
had the means, by steam power, and at one trip, to descend 
upon the enemy’s coast, with all his divisions of infantry, with 
his brigade of light cavalry, and with the whole of his field ar- 
tillery ; and he would be enabled, if he landed in face of an en- 
emy, to bring his guns into action, whilst his infantry formed 
upon the beach. 

When the Allied commanders determined to execute the or- 
Ineffectual at. Gers addressed to them, they saw the importance 
tempts of the of endeavoring to veil their project from the enemy. 
ceive the ene. With this view they tried to induce a belief that 
aah Odessa was to be the object of attack. But the 
measures which they took for this purpose were very slight 
and weak. To deceive the enemy by the mere spreading of a 
report, the first step for a General to take would be that of ut- 
tering the false word to some of his own people. That would 
be a difficult service for Lord Raglan to perform; and I do 
not believe that he ever could or ever did perform it. 


Preparations, 


Cuap. XXXIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 391 


Another contrivance for diverting the enemy’s attention 
from the Crimea was that of endeavoring to alarm him for his 
Bessarabian frontier. Partly to attain this end, and partly, as 
was surmised, with the more ambitious object of striking a 
blow at some of the Czar’s retiring columns, Marshal St. Ar- 
naud moved no less than three divisions into the Dobrudja. 
But, in truth, all secrecy was forbidden to the Allies. The 
same power which dictated the expedition precluded its con- 
cealment. It was in a council of the whole people that En- 
gland had resolved upon the enterprise; and what advantage 
there is in knowledge of an enemy’s plans, that she freely gave 
to Russia. It might seem that for the Emperor of the French, 
who had shown that he was capable of the darkest secrecy in 
his own designs, it must have been trying to have to act with 
a Power which propounded her schemes in print. But, hap- 
ily, he understood England, and knew something of the con- 
ditions under which she moves into action. 

On the 10th of August a fire broke out in the British maga- 
zines at Varna, and a large quantity of military 
stores was consumed. 

But another and more dreadful enemy had now entered the 
camp of the Allies. From the period of its arrival 
in the Levant the French army had been suffering 
much from sickness. In the British army, on the contrary, 
though slight complaints were not unfrequent, the bodily con- 
dition of the men had been, upon the whole, very good; and 
so it continued up to the 19th of July. On that day, out of the 
whole Light Division, there were only 110 in hospital. But it 
seems that one of the omens which portend the visitation of a 
great epidemic is a more than common flush of health. With 
the French, the cholera first showed itself on board their troop- 
ships whilst passing from Marseilles to the Dardanelles. It 
then appeared among the French quartered at Gallipoli, and 
followed their battalions into Bulgaria. There, its ravages in- 
creased, and before the beginning of the last week in July it 
reached the British army. By the 19th of August our regi- 
ments in Bulgaria.had lost 532 men. But it was amongst the 
three French divisions marched into the Dobrudja, and espe- 
cially in General Canrobert’s Division, that the disease raged 
with the most deadly virulence. In the day’s march, and some- 
times within the space of only a few hours, hundreds of men 
dropped down in the sudden agonies of cholera; and out of 
one battalion alone it was said that, besides those already dead, 
no less than 500 sufferers were carried alive in the wagons. 
On the 8th of August it was computed, by an officer of their 


Fire at Varna. 


Cholera. 


392 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Cuap. XXXIV. 


staff, that out of the three French divisions which marched into 
the Dobrudja, no less than 10,000 lay dead or struck down by 
sickness. 

If the cholera had been confined to the land forces, the Gen- 
erals would not, perhaps, have allowed it to delay their em- 
barkation; but it now reached the fleets. In a few days the 
crews were in such a state that all idea of attempting to em- 
bark the troops was, for the moment, quite out of the ques- 
tion; and on the 11th and 12th of August the Admirals put 
out from their anchorage, in the hope of driving away the dis- 
ease with the pure breezes of the sea. But they had scarcely 
done this when, on board some of the ships, the mysterious 
pest began to rage with a violence rare in Europe. The 
‘Britannia’ alone lost 105 men. The number of those stricken, 
and of those attending upon them, was so great, that it was 
impracticable to carry on the common duties of the ship in the 
usual way; and if the disease had continued to rage with un- 
diminished violence for three days more, there would have 
been the spectacle of a majestic three-decker floating helpless 
upon the waves for want of hands to work her. This time of 
trial proved the quality of those who remained unstricken. 
‘There was a waywardness in the course of the disease, on 
board British ships, for which it is difficult to account. It 
spared the officers. On board British ships of war the seaman 
is accustomed to look to those who command him with a strong 
affectionate reliance; and now the poor sufferers, in their child- 
like simplicity, were calling upon their officers for help and com- 
fort. An officer thus appealed to would go and lie down by 
the side of the sufferer, and soothe him as though he were an 
infant. And this trust and this devotion were not always in 
vain. Even against malignant cholera the officer seemed to be 
not altogether powerless; for partly by holding the tortured 
sufferer in his kind hands, partly by cheering words, and part- 
ly by wild remedies, invented in despair of all regular medical 
treatment, he was often enabled to fight the disease, or to make 
the men think that he did. 

Almost suddenly the pestilence ceased on board the British 
ships of war. The dead were overboard, and the survivors 
returned to their accustomed duties with an alacrity quickened 
by the delight of looking forward to active operations against 
the enemy. Instinctively, or else with wise design, both offi- 
cers and men dropped all mention of the tr agedy through 
which they had passed.! 


1 I was for several days on board the ‘ Britannia’ without once, I think, 
" hearing the least allusion to the pestilence which just four weeks before had 
slain 105 of the ship’s crew. 


Cap. XXXV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 893 


In a few days from the time when the cholera had been 
raging with its utmost fury the crews of the fleet were ready 
to undertake the great business of embarking the troops and 
landing them on the coast of the Crimea. 

In the camps of the Allied armies, at this time, the cholera 
Weakly conai. ad abated, but had not ceased. There were fevers, 
tion of the En- too, and other complaints. Grievous sickness fell 
ensh seldiery-  ypyon that part of our camp which had been pitched 
in the midst of the beauteous scenery of the lake of Devna, 
but the whole English army at this time began to show signs 
of failing health. It appeared that, even of the men out of 
hospital and actually present under arms, hardly any were in 
the enjoyment of sound health; hardly any were capable of 
their usual amount of exertion. 

This weakly condition of the men was destined to act, with 
other causes, in bringing upon the army cruel sufferings; and 
it may be asked whether, with the soldiers in this condition of 
body, it was right to undertake an invasion. The answer 
would be this:—the medical authorities thought, and with ap- 
parently good reason, that, for troops sickening under the fierce 
summer heats of Bulgaria, the sea voyage, the descent upon 
another and more healthy shore, and, above all, the animating 
presence of the enemy, would work a good effect upon the 
health of the men; and, although these hopes proved vain, 
they seemed at the time to rest upon fair grounds. And, after 
all,itis hard to say what other disposition of the troops would 
have united the advantages of being better and possible. To 
remain in Bulgaria, or to attempt to operate in the neighbor- 
hood of the Danube, was to linger in the midst of those very 
atmospheric poisons which had brought the health of the army 
to its then state; and, on the other hand, our people at home 
would hardly have borne to see the army sent back to Malta, 
and forced to recede from the conflict, for the bare reason that 
some of the men were in hospital, and that the rest—without 
being ill—were said to be in a weakly condition. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


Our admiral had at his command the means for conveying 
arrangements the British force to the enemy’s shore either in 
fhostarting ng steam vessels or in sailing ships towed by steam 
the expedition. power; and until the eve of the embarkation the 


R 2 


7 ——— * 3 * . a pt “4 
f ry * 


a id 
394 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. = [Cuar. XXXV. 


French believed that their resources would enable them to 
achieve a like result. So, at a conference of the four admirals, 
held on the 20th of August, it was arranged that the whole of 
the French and English armament should move from the coast 
at the same time under steam power; and the 2nd of Septem- 
ber was looked forward to as the day when the armament 
might perhaps go to sea, but the exact time would of course 
depend upon weather and other circumstances beyoud the 
reach of exact calculation. 

On the 24th of August the huge operation of embarking the 
The embarka. armies had alr eady begun. The French embarked 
Sons 24,000 infantry and 70 pieces of field artillery; but 
since they were straitened in their means of sea-transport, 
the number of horses they allotted to each gun was reduced 
trom six to four. The French embarked no eavalry.' A large 
portion of the French troops were put on koard ships of war,? 
and other portions were distributed among a great number of 

sailing vessels. Some of these were very small craft. 

Attached to the French ar my, and placed under the orders 
of Marshal St. Arnaud, there was a force of between 5000 and 
6000 Turkish infantry. These men were embarked mainly or 
entirely on board Turkish vessels of war. 

Sir Edmund Lyons was charged with the duty of embark- 
ing the English forces; and having first got on board our 60 
pieces of field ar tillery, completely equipped, with the full com- 
plement of horses belonging to every gun, he proceeded with 
the embarkation of the 22,000 infantry and the full thousand 
of cavalry, which Lord Raglan intended to move from Bulga- 
ria to the coast of the Crimea. To put on board ship a body 
of foot soldiers is comparatively a simple process, but the 
shipping of horses involves so heavy a cost, so great an exer- 
tion of human energy, that he who undertakes such a task 
upon any thing like a large scale must needs be a man in earn- 
est. On the other hand, it was clear that for an invasion of 
the Crimea a body of cavalry was strictly needed. ‘Therefore, 
a sagacious interpreter of warlike signs, who saw that the En- 


1 They took- with them from 80 to 100 horsemen to perform escort duty ; 
but of course I do not regard this as an exception to the statement that ° 10 
cavalry was embarked.’ 

? Our naval officers are strongly opposed to the practice of putting troops 
on board ships of war. They are not the men to set their personal con- 
venience against the exigencies of the public service, but they can not en- 
dure that the efficiency of a man-of-war should be for one moment suspend- 
ed. It is well ascertained, too, that the presence of a great number of sol- 
diers—men who for the time of the voyage are almost necessarily idlers—is 
injurious to the discipline of a ship. 


Cuap. XXXV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 395 


glish General was embarking a thousand cavalry horses, and 
that the French were embarking none, would be led to conjec- 
ture that the English were resolved to make the descent, and 
that the French were not. It will be seen by-and-by that 
such a conjecture would have been sound. 

The time necessary for embarking a given number of foot 
soldiers is small in proportion to that required for getting on 
board an equal number of troopers with their chargers. Nor 
is this all. The embarkation of infantry is not necessarily 
stopped by a moderate swell. The embarkation of cavalry is 
rendered very slow and difficult by even a slight movement 
of the sea, and is stopped altogether by a little increase of 
surf. The business of embarking the British cavalry was 
checked during some days by a wind from the northeast and 
its consequent swell, but afterward the weather changed, and 
the whole force was got on board without the loss of a man.! 

Lord Raglan could not repress the feeling with which he 
looked upon the exertions of our naval officers and seamen. 
‘The embarkation,’ he wrote on the 29th of August—‘the 
‘embarkation is proceeding rapidly and successfully, thanks to 
‘the able arrangement of Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, 
‘and the unceasing exertions of the officers and men under 
‘his orders. It is impossible for me to express in adequate 
‘terms my sense of the value of the assistance the army under 
‘my command derives from the Royal Navy. The same feel- 
‘ing prevails from the highest to the lowest—from Vice-Ad- 
‘miral Dundas to the youngest sailor, an ardent desire to co- 
‘operate by every possible means, is manifest throughout, and 
‘I am proud of being associated with men who are animated 
‘by such a spirit, and who are so entirely devoted to the serv- 
‘ice of their country.’ ; 

Of course the French, unencumbered with cavalry, were on 
Arh iets board before the English embarkation was com- 
French caleu- plete; but the steam power at the command of the 
Bich by aneet French fell short, and the necessity of a variation 
erenead of from the plan determined upon by the four admirals 

‘was now announced. On the 4th of September 
Admiral Hamelin and an officer on the staff of the French 
army informed Vice- Admiral Dundas that their resources 
would not, as they had expected, enable them to have their 
sailing transports towed by steamers. 


1 The French were not so fortunate, for a painful accident occurred in the 
course of their embarkgtion. One of their steam vessels ran down a boat 
laden with Zonaves. The men, encumbered by their packs, could do little to 
save themselves, 2nd more than twenty were drowned. 


396. INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ([Cuarp. XXXVI. 


No explanation was given of the failure which had thus sud- 
denly crippled the French armament. The result was dis- 
tressing at the time, for it was seen that the whole flotilla 
would be clogged by the slowness of the sailing vessels in 
which the French troops were embarked, and the fate of the 
enterprise was rendered more than ever dependent upon the 
accidents of weather. Marshal St. Arnaud grew restless. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


We have seen that the 2nd of September had been looked 
forward to as the time for the departure of the united arma- 
Excitement Ments, and on that day, with military punctuality, 
and impatience Marshal St. Arnaud went to Baljik; but the wind 
of St. Arnaud. and the waves are still undisciplined forces, and the 
French embarkations were not destined to be completed until 
the evening of the 4th. The Marshal, therefore, was kept wait- 
ing at Baljik, and meanwhile sickness began to make havoc 
with his troops, for they were densely crowded on board the 
transports. 

The marshal was much tortured by the anxiety which he 
had had to bear during these three painful days, and (possibly 
to calm his mind) Vice-Admiral Dundas seems to have sug- 
gested to him that, his sailing vessels not being provided with 
steam power to tow them, he might as well cause them at once 
to weigh anchor. By these causes, joined to his irritation at 
what he thought the backwardness of the English embarka- 
Heisindueea tions, the Marshal was induced to determine—not 
tosetsail with- merely that he would act upon Dundas’s suggestion, 
ae but—that he himself would wait no longer, and 
with him all would put to sea on the 5th of September with his 
and the troops SAiling fleet; so when, on the same morning, Lord | 
onboard them. Raglan reached Baljik, he was surprised by the in- 
‘telligence that the Marshal had already sailed out on board the 
‘Ville de Paris.’ 

On the evening of the 6th the British armament was ready, 
and the arrangements for the voyage of the whole flotilla com- 
Thenaval plete. The French fleet, already at sea, consisted 
forces ofthe of fifteen sail-of-the-line, with ten or twelve war- 
eee steamers, and the Turkish fleet of eight sail-of-the- 
line, with three war-steamers; but the French and the Turkish 
vessels were doing service as transports, and were so encum- 


Cuap. XXXVI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 397 


bered with troops that they could not’ have been brought into 
action with common prudence. It was upon the English fleet, 
Duty devolv. therefore, that the duty of protecting the whole 
ing on the En- armada really devolved; and, supposing that the 
giish fleet. enemy were aware of the helpless state of the 
French and. Turkish vessels laden with troops, and of the enor- 
mous convoy of transports which had to be protected, he might 
be expected to judge that it was incumbent upon him to come 
out of the harbor and assail the vast flotilla of transports; for 
under the guns of Sebastopol the Russians had fifteen sailing 
ships-of-the-line,’ with some frigates and brigs, and also twelve 
war-steamers, though of these the ‘ Vladimir’ was the only 
powerful vessel.? To encounter this force, and to defend from 
its enterprises the rest of the armada, the English had ten sail- 
of-the-line (including two screw-steamers), two fifty-gun frig- 
ates, and thirteen lesser steamers of war heavily armed. | 

The anxious duty of disposing and guiding the convoy was 
Arrangements intrusted by Admiral Dundas to Sir Edmund Ly- 
he tie «© Ons, and, under Sir Edmund’s directions, Captain 
convoy. Mends of the ‘ Agamemnon’ framed the programme 
of the voyage. On the evening of the 6th the captains of 
transports were called by signal on board the ‘ Emperor,’ and 
there Mends read to them the instructions which he asked 
them to obey. The captains thus addressed were not in the 
Queen’s service, but they were English seamen, and their an- 
' swer was characteristic. ‘They were not flighty men. They 
respectfully asked for an assurance that in the event of death 
their widows would be held entitled to pensions; and, as to 
the question whether of their own free will they would en- 
counter the chances of a naval action, they answered it with 
three cheers. It is not by the mere muster-roll of the army o1 
the navy that England counts her forces. 

With his force of horse, foot, and artillery, Lord Raglan had 
“The forces ana 01 board the transports (now all collected at Bal- 
supplies now jik)3 the full number of ammunition-carts required 
ps for the first reserve of ammunition, the beasts re- 
quired for drawing them, and sixty other carts, also provided 
with draught power. But, in order to move so large a force 
at one trip, it was found necessary to dispense with the bat 
horses of the army, and the force was not provided with means 
of land transport either for the tents of the men or for the bag- 


' Some say sixteen. 

? Unless the ‘ Bessarabia’ be counted as a powerful steamer. 

* At the time here spoken of there were two artillery transports lagging, 
but they were up in sufficient time. 


398 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XXXVI. 


gage of the officers. ‘There were also on board large supplies 
of field ammunition, of food for the troops, and of ‘barley and 
hay for the horses. In some of the horse transports there was 
an insufticiency of the forage required for the voyage. With 
that grave exception, all the arrangements seem to have been 
good. Due means had been taken for insuring, so far as was 
possible, the simultaneous transit, not only of our ships of war, 
but of the whole force which Lord Raglan had embarked, to- 
gether with its vast appendage of warlike stores and provi- 
sions; for every sailing vessel, whether she were a ship of war 
or a tr ansport, was towed by a sufficiently powerful steamer. 
None of our ships of war carried troops on board: they were 
all, therefore, ready for action. 

In addition to the forces and the means of land transport 
Troops ant. Which were actually on board, Lord Raglan had in 
supplies left at readiness for embarkation the whole brigade of 
Reap. heavy cavalry, another division of infantry, a siege- 
.train,! and some five or six thousand pack-horses. The sick 
remained in Bulgaria; and such of the men out of hospital as 
seemed to be in a very weakly state were left at Varna and 
employed in garrison duty. 

Vice-Admiral Dundas, commanding the whole British fleet, 
had his flag on board the ‘ Britannia ;’? Lyons, in the ‘ Agamem- 
non,’ had charge of the convoy. Each vessel had assigned to 
her the place she was to take when the signal for moving 
should be given. 

Before night, the whole of the English flotilla, together with 
that part of the French and the Turkish flotilla which had the 
command of steam power, was assembled in Baljik Bay, and 
in readiness to sail on the morrow. 

Men remember the beauteous morning of the 7th of Sep- 
Departure of tember. The moonlight was still floating on the 
th English waters when men, looking from numberless decks 
Armada and : 
ofthe French toward the east, were able to hail the dawn. There 
steam vessel. Wag a summer breeze blowing fair from the land. 
At a quarter before five a gun from the ‘ Britannia’ gave the 
signal to weigh. The air was obscured by the busy smoke of 
the engines; and it was hard to see how and whence due or- 
der would come; but presently the ‘Agamemnon’ moved 
through, and with signals at all her masts, for Lyons was on 
board her, and was governing and ordering the convoy. The 


1 The additional division of infantry (the 4th Division) was at Varna: the 
Scots Grays were on the Bosphorus; and the rest of the heavy cavalry in 
Bulgaria, where also the bat horses were left.. The siege-train was on board 
off Varna. 


Cuap. XXXVII.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 399 


French steamers of war went out, with their transports in tow, 
and their great vessels formed line. The French went out 
more quickly than the English, and in better order. Many of 
their transports were vessels of very small size; and of neces- 
sity, therefore, they were a swarm. Our transports went out 
in five columns of only thirty each. Then—guard over all— 
the English war fleet, in single column, moved slowly out of 
the bay.! 

Here, then, and apart from the bodies of foot and artillery 
embarked by the French and the Turks, there was an arma- 
ment not unworthy of England. Without combat, and by the 
mere stress of its presence, our fleet drove the enemy’s flag 
from the seas which flowed upon his shores ;? and a small but 
superb land force, complete in all arms, was clothed with the 
power of a great army, by the ease with which it could be 
thrown upon any part of the enemy’s coast.? 

Lord Raglan had not suffered himself to be disconcerted by 
the departure of Monsieur St. Arnaud, and the consequent sev- 
erance of the Allied forces. No steamer was sent to re-knit 
his communications with the errant French Marshal. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


WE have seen that Marshal St. Arnaud, under feelings of 
some vexation, put to sea on the morning of the 5th of Sep- 
tember. He could not but know that, by his abrupt separa- 
tion from the British fleet and army, he had offended against 
the English General. Upon reflection, he could not but grieve 
that he had done this. But he had put to sea, and had since 


"I did not reach the fleet till some three days afterward, when it was an- 
chored at the rendezvous, and my impression of the scene in the Bay of Bal- 
jik is derived partly from some MSS. which have been furnished to me, but 
partly, also, from what struck me as a very good account of it, which I saw 
in a printed book, by Mr. Wood, a spectator. 

2IT am justified i in speaking of the English fleet as the force which kept 
the enemy’s ships in duress; because, as we have seen. the French men-of- 
war were doing duty as transports, and were not, therefore, in a state for go- 
ing into action. 

3], of course, speak here of the inherent power of such an armament, 
without reference to the fact that strictly-defined instructions had been ad- 
dressed to Lord Raglan, and that the purport of these had become known io 
the enemy. The fixedness of the plan of campaign, and the puklicity which 
it had obtained, reduced the power of the fores to the level of its actual num- 
bers and its intrinsic strength. 


400 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CuHapv. XXXVID 


heard no tidings from the shore. No swift steamer had fol. 
lowed him with entreaties to stay his course. He was left free 
to pursue his voyage; and the voyage was growing more and 
more dismal. 

‘The Black Sea’ is a truer name than the ‘Euxine’. Now, 
as in old times (if the summer be hardly past), the voyager 
leaves a coast smiling bright beneath skies of blue and glow- 
ing with sunny splendor; yet, perhaps, and in less than an 
hour, the heavens above and the waters around him are dark 
with the gloom and threatening aspect belonging to the North- 
ern Ocean.!. Monsieur St. Arnaud encountered. this change. 
Marshal st. ‘The wind blew from its dark quarter. Every hour 
that ite Was carrying the Marshal farther and farther into 
English, the centre of the inhospitable sea, farther and far- 
ther from the English fleet, farther and farther from Lord Rag- 
lan. If he went on, there was no junction to look for except 
at an imaginary point marked with a pencil on 
the charts, but having no existence in the material 
world; and from the wind and the angry waves, no less than 
from his own fast cooling thoughts, he began to receive a dis- 
tressing sense of his isolation. The struggle in his mind was 
painful, but it came to an end. ‘Iam nearly twenty leagues,’ 
writes the Marshal, on the evening of the 6th, to Lord Rag- 
Jan—*1 am nearly twenty leagues northeast of Baljik, sepa- 

‘rated from the English fleet, and from the part of my own 

‘convoy which was to sail with the convoy of the English 
‘fleet. Admiral Dundas’s last letter being worded condition- 
‘ally, so far as concerns his sailing this morning, I am not sure 
‘of not seeing increased, in great proportions, the distance 
‘which separ ates me from you, and then there is reason to 
‘fear circumstances of wind or sea which would render our 
‘junction difficult, and might compromise every thing defini- 
‘tively. In this painful situation I decide to invite Admiral 
‘Hamelin (on his declaration that he can not wait 
‘where he is) to return to meet the fleet and the 
‘convoy.’ So the Marshal sailed back. Thus, happily, ceased 
the impulse which had threatened to sunder the fleets. 

Lord Raglan’s.answer was stern. He removed the grounds 
which the Marshal had assigned for his departure, and then 
pointed gr avely to the true line of duty for the future. ‘Thanks 
“be to God,’ he wrote, ‘ every thing now favors our enterprise. 
‘Very soon we shall reach the appointed rendezvous, and then 


His anxiety. 


He sails back. 


1 The contrast between the climate of the Black Sea and that of the coun- 
tries which snrround it is one of the enigmas to which scientific men have 
applied their minds, but whether as yet with success I can not say. 


Cuap. XXXVII:] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, 401 


Lord Raglan's ‘We Shall have an opportunity of showing that our 
Teproof. ‘manner of acting together remains unaltered, and 
‘that the sincerity of which you speak will continue, as at pres- 
‘ent, to be our guide and our mutual satisfaction.’! 

Coming from Lord Raglan, this language was a reproof; but 
the result tends to show that it was happily adjusted to the 
object in view. Thenceforth there was no longer 
any tendency on the part of Marshal St. Arnaud to 
break away from his colleague. From the hour of the first 
conference at the Tuileries in the spring of the year, Lord Rag- 
Lord Raclan's 120’S authority in the Allied counsels had been al- 
inereasing as- Ways increasing; and now, as we shall presently 
cendency. see, it gained a complete ascendant. 

On the 8th the great flotilla, moving under steam, came up 
The whole Al- With the French and the Turkish sailing fleets which 
lied armada .r bad left Baljik on the 5th of September. The 
atsea, French fleet was in double column, and tacking to 
eastward across the bows of the steam flotilla, but, upon being 
approached, the French ships backed topsails and lay to. Ev- 
ery one of the French vessels had kept its position beautifully, 
and, the moment the signal to lie to was given, it was obeyed 
* with a quickness which was honestly admired by our seamen. 
The Turkish fleet also lay to; and, for a while, the whole ar- 
mada of the Allies was gathered together. But the English 
fleet, being moved by steam, kept on to windward; and pres- 
But the feets @Mtly the French and the Turks began to sail off on 
are again part- opposite tacks. Between the fleets thus disparting, 
of the English flotilla of transports passed through in 
five columns. , | 

The rendezvous was to be at a point forty miles due west 
of Cape Tarkan, and thither moved the three fleets with all 
their convoy. 

There were in the French army several officers holding high 

( command, and being otherwise men of great weight, 
Step taken by : 

French officers Who had become very thoughtful on the subject of 
‘onthe sep. the contemplated descent upon the enemy’s coast. 
dition against Personally, they were men quite as dauntless as 
Sebastopol. those who gave no care to the business in hand, 
but, being versed in the study, if not in the practice of the 
great art of war, they had become strongly impressed with 
the hazardous. character of the intended enterprise. It seems 
probable that up to this time they had relied upon the mature 
judgment ‘and the supposed discreetness of Lord Raglan to 


Its good effect. 


1 Translated from the French, in which the letter was written. 


—ae 


402 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXVIL 


prevent what they regarded as a rash attempt. It might well 
seem natural to them that two Governments in the West of 
Europe, attempting to dictate an invasion of a Russian proy- 
ince at a distance of 3000 miles, would, sooner or later, be 
checked in their project by the generals commanding the 
forces; and, of course, they would have liked that the disfa- 
vor which unjustly attaches to military prudence should fall 
upon the English General rather than upon themselves or their 
own commander. But in the course of the 7th of September 
it became known to them that Lord Raglan was already at 
sea. They then knew, or rather they then recognized the fact, 
that the whole armada was really gliding on toward the en- 
emy’s coast, and the ferment their minds underwent now 
brought them to take a strange step. 

Lord Raglan was on board the ‘ Caradoc,’ and on the 8th of 
September, whilst the fleets lay near to one another, this vessel 
was boarded by Vice-Admiral Dundas. He came to say that 
a French steamer had conveyed to him the desire of the Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud to see Lord Raglan and the Vice-Admiral Dun- 
Conference on Cas, and to see them on board the ‘ Ville de Paris,’ 
Po par. Because the Marshal himself was too ill to be able 
is to move. It happened that the sea at this time was 
rough, and the naval men thought that it would be difficult for 
Lord Raglan, with his one arm, to get up the side of the three- 
decker in w hich the Marshal was sailing; Lord Raglan, there- 
fore, deputed his military secretary, Colonel Steele, to accom- 
pany Vice-Admiral Dundas on board the Ville de Paris. 

The Vice-Admiral and Colonel Steele found the Marshal sit- 
St. Amand ting up, but in a state of much suffering, and they 
disabled by ill- were informed that he was very ill. He however 
he sat at the conference, and the other persons present 
were Admiral Hamelin, Admiral Bruat, Admiral Count Buat 
Wiliaumez, Colonel Trochu, General Rose, Vice-Admiral Dun- 
das, and Colonel Steele. The Marshal took no part in the dis- 
cussion which ensued. It seems he could hardly speak. 

It was stated that the meeting had been summoned in order 
Unsigned pa. that a paper might be read to it. The document 
persreadto bore no signature, and Marshal St. Arnaud was no 
theconferenee. Harty to it; but it was stated that it emanated from 
General Canrobert, General Martimprey, and the principal offi- 
cers of the French artillery and engineers; and it was said too 
that General Rose! had furnished some of the materials from 
which it was composed. 


1 Now Sir Hugh Rose, the officer spoken of as Colonel Rose in Chapter 
VII. He was at this time aceredited as British Commissioner at the French 


Cuar. XXXVII.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 403 


The document took it for granted that there were three 
places for landing which merited discussion—the Katscha, the 
Yetsa, and Kaffa; and it then went on to show the advan- 
tages and the drawbacks which would attend an attempt to 
land at each of those three spots. The objections to the land- 
ing at the Katscha were stated with so much force as to show 
that the framers of the document entirely disapproved it, and, 
indeed, they urged that any landing north of Sebastopol would 
be surely followed by disastrous results. The document also— 
raised weighty objections to a descent upon the coast near the 
Yetsa. The only plan which was made to appear at all justi- 
fiable was that of a landing at Kaffa, and, although the difticul- 
ties attending even that operation were placed in a strong 
light, it was orally stated that the framers of the document 
considered that plan to be one nearly free from objection. 

Now Kaffa was a sea-port in the eastern part of the Crimean 
peninsula, and divided from Sebastopol by many long marches 
over mountain roads. The autumn had already come. The 
landing at Kaffa implied an abandonment for that year at least 
of all attempts against Sebastopol. It was to attack Sebasto- 
pol forthwith, and in the year 1854, that the great flotilla, with 
all its precious freight, had been gathered together, and now, 
whilst the vast armada was moving toward the enemy’s coast, 
there came from the men of weight and science in the French 
army this singular protest—for that is what it really was— 
against an enterprise already begun. 

Marshal St. Arnaud was in a painful strait. Being, as he 
St.Amaua knew, without ascendency in the French army, he 
leaves allto apparently thought that the weight attaching to 
Ford Raglan. the combined opinion of all the protesting officers 
was too great to warrant him in meeting their interposition 
with reproof or inattention; yet, suffering as he did at the 
time under bodily anguish, he was ill able to go into the discus- 
sions thus strangely forced on by the remonstrants. He found 
a solution. He desired Colonel Trochu to say that he would 
concur in any decision to which Lord Raglan might come. 

The conference, therefore, was adjourned to the ‘ Caradoe,’ 
Conference aa. #24 Lord Raglan and Sir Edmund Lyons were then 
joumned to the present at it, together with all those who had met 

Varadee." on board the ‘ Ville de Paris,’ except only Marshal 
St. Arnaud. 

Head-quarters. I have no reason for supposing that he intended to give any 
sanction to the step taken by the French Remonstrants; and I imagine that 
any materials which he may have put in their hands must have been con- 
fined to maps or statements showing the physical character of the country 
about to be invaded, 


ee eee 


404 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar, XXXVIT. 


Thus, then, the ebullition of prudence which had broken out 
amongst the officers of the French army came under the arbit- 
rament of tle English General, and with him, and with him 
only, it rested to determine the movements of the whole Al 
lied force. 

The business of the conference was opened by Colonel Tro- 
chu. This officer, as we have already seen, was supposed to 
be better acquainted than any one else with the mind of the 
French Emperor, and his counsels, no longer bending in the 
direction of extreme caution, were now rather in favor: of en- 
terprise. The Colonel had possession of the document. He 
read it aloud, and, as he went on with the perusal, he com- 
mented upon every point; but he declared that he was no 
party to the contents of the paper, and that he did not share 
the anxieties! either of the army or the navy as to the disas- 
ters which might be expected to follow from a landing on the 
coast north of Sebastopol. 

Thereupon Admiral Bruat repudiated the supposition of his 
being a party to the apprehensions attributed to the admirals. 
Lyons also repudiated it. Neither he nor Vice-Admiral Dun- 
das had known before the conference that any such step as 
that of framing and presenting the remonstrance had been im- 
agined by the “French officer s, and, as might be expected, they 
were both very sure that nothing of the kind had sprung from 
the British navy. 

The inference which Lord Raglan drew from the document 
was, that it evinced ‘ an indisposition to the expedition amongst 
‘the officers who are supposed to be looked up to and to exer- 
‘cise influence in the French army,’ and, ‘in fact,’ said he, ‘ we 
‘were told as much at the meeting here on Friday.’ 

These, then, were the ‘timid counsels’ of which the French 
Emperor afterward spoke when he ascribed the glory of over- 
ruling them to Marshal St. Arnaud. If it was right, as most 
men will think it was, that these counsels should be overruled, 
there was merit due to St. Arnaud, but his merit lay, not in 
any personal resistance which he was able to oppose to his 
counselors (for he was helpless, as we have seen, from bodily 
illness), but in the sagacity and good sense which had led him 
to intrust the decision to his Haglish colleague. 


;  Préoccupations.’ 

* «'Timides avis.” When this letter of the French Emperor first appeared, 
it was imagined that the imputation of giving ‘timid’ counsels was intended 
to be cast upon some of our Generals or Admirals; but the Duke of New- 

castle, with a becoming spirit, determined instantly that this should not be 
suffered to pass ; and the ‘ Moniteur’ was afterward made to explain official- 
ly that the ‘timides avis’ were attributed by the Emperor, not to any En- 
glishman, but to some unnamed officers in the French service. 


Cuar.XXXVII ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 405 


Lord Raglan’s method of dealing with the protest of the ° 
Lard agian's French authorities was char acteristic of himself and 
way of dealing of the English nature. He did not much combat 
with the 
French remon- the objections set down in the paper, but he passed 
mtrnat them by, and quietly lowered the debate from the | 
high region of strategy to a question of humbler sort—a ques- 
tion as to what four steamers could be most conveniently em- 
ployed for a reconnaissance on the enemy’s coast. 

So the conference which had been summoned to judge 
whether the enterprise against Sebastopol should not be 
brought to a stop, now found itself only deciding that the ves- 
sels sent on the reconnaissance should consist of one French 
steamer, together with the ‘ Agamemnon,’ the ‘ Caradoc,’ and 
the ‘Sampson.’ 

But in truth the powers of the conference had silently pass- 
ed into the hands of one man. Thenceforth the protest was 
dropped, for, if its framers had risen up against the notion of 
His now com. VEING drawn on into what they thought a rash ven- 
plete aseend- ture by the mere effect of M.St. Arnaud’s acquies- 
7 cence, they were calmed when they came to know 
that the whole force at last had a leader. If still they held to 
their opinions, they did so in a spirit of cheerful deference 
which prevented them from throwing any farther obstacle in 
the way of the enterprise. The armada moved on. 

Again and again it has happened that mighty armaments, in- 
Theusehe cluding the forces of several states and people of 
makes of his. diverse races, have been gathered and drawn into 
a Vee scenes of conflict by the will of one man; but in 
general, when such things have been done, the compelling mind 
has been brought to its “resolve by the cogency of satisfied rea- 
son or by force of selfish desire. What was new in this enter- 
prise was, that he who inexorably forced it on did not of him- 
self desire it, nor deem it to be wise, nor even in a high degree 
prudent ; and the power which had strength to bend the whole 
armada to the purpose of the invasion was—not ambition in- 
flamed, nor reason convinced, but—the mere loyalty of an En- 
glish officer refusing to stint ‘the obedience which he owed to 
the: minister of his Queen. 

On the 9th the whole of the English fleet, with all its con- 
The English « Voy, was anchored in deep water at the appointed 
pane ct rati- rendezvous, a spot 40 miles west of Cape Tarkand. 
dezvous. Lord Raglan made haste to use the great powers 
Lord Raglan in with which he was now invested, and he determined 
person under- to/reconnoitre the coast with his own eyes. At 
hikanee gt four o’clock on the morning of the 10th General 


naissance of > 
the coast. Canrobert, and the other French officers who were 


406 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XXXVIL- 


to attend the reconnaissance, came on board the ‘ Caradoc, 
Lord Raglan had with him Sir Edmund Lyons, Sir John Bur- 
goyne, and Sir George Brown. Not long after daybreak the 
‘Caradoc’ neared Fort Constantine, and then approached the 
entrance of the harbor. It was a fair, bright morning, and the 
Sunday bells were ringing in the churches when Lord Raglan 
first saw the great forts, ‘and the ships, and the glittering, cu- 
pola’d town. ~ Afterward, the vessel being steered round off 
Cape Chersonesus, he could see two old Genoese forts, and 
ridges of hills dividing the great harbor from the southern 
coast of the peninsula. What he looked on was for him fated 
ground, for the Genoese forts marked the inlet of Balaclava, 
and the ridges he saw were the ‘heights before Sebastopol.’ 
But the future lay hidden from his gaze. 

-' The ‘Caradoc’ was now steered toward the north, and the 
officers on board her surveyed the mouths of the Belbek, the 
Katscha, the Alma, and the Bulganak, and the coast str etching 
thence to Kupatoria. Of the sites thus reconnoitred General 
Canrobert thought the Katscha the one best fitted for a land- 
ing. Lord Raglan entirely disapproved of the Katscha, and 
he did not at all like the ground at the mouths of the other 
rivers; but when, moving on in the ‘Caradoc,’ he was off the 
part of the coast which lies six miles north of the Bulganak, 
he observed an extended tract of beach, which seemed to him 
to be the ground for which the Allies were seeking. Without 
generating a debate upon the subject, he nevertheless elicited 
so much of the opinion of those around him as he deemed to 
He choosesthe be useful. Then he declared his resolve. He said 
landing-place. that the Allied armies should Jand at Old Fort. 

There are times when, to anxious, doubting mortals, no boon 
from Heaven is so welcome as the final resolve which is to 
govern their actions. It was so now. Debating ceased, and 
a happy alacrity came in its stead. That day, our fleet and 
the swarming convoy close gathered around had been still ly- 
ing anchored in deep water at the point of rendezvous. To 
many, those long, peaceful Sabbath hours seemed to token a 
wanton delay—or worse tha 
great purpose of the Allies; but at night, the ‘Caradoc’ came 
in, and soon, though few could tell whence came the change, 
nor what had been passing, there flew from deck to deck a 
joyful belief—a belief that in some way—in some way not yet 
understood, the enterprise had gathered new force. 

The French and Turkish fleets, less amply provided with 
steam power than the English, had fallen to leeward, but on 
the evening of the 11th they were anchored within thirty miles 


“OFF 
ee 


Cuap. XXXVII.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: 407 


of the British fleet, and the communication was, of course, kept 
up by steam vessels. 

During the whole of Tuesday the 12th, the French, Turkish, 
The whole Ar. 20d English fleets were slowly drawing together 
mada converg- and converging upon the enemy’s coast. Before 
eer tike sunset the armed navies were all near together, and 
Cinimes. from their decks men could make out with glasses 
the low cliff to the north of Eupatoria. The English fleet an- 
chored for the night. The French Admiral sent to intimate 
that he would not anchor, but go on all night, in the hope of 
being ready for the landing the next morning. Vice-Admiral 
Dundas saw that that hope was vain, because large portions 
of the French convoy were still so distant that there could be 
no landing on the following day. The French, it will be re- 
membered, were without steam power for their transports, and 


the breezes were light. So, although every hour saw fresh: 


clusters of vessels slowly closing with the fleet, the sea, toward 
the west, was always strewed with distant sails, and, before 
the hulls of those hove well in sight, the horizon got speckled 
again with sails more distant still. So the English Admiral 
anchored his fleet for the night. 

The next morning, the 13th, the ‘ Ville de Paris,’ under tow 
of the ‘ Napoleon’ steamer, had come up, and, although so late 
as noon, some of the French ships of war, and very many of 
their transports, were still distant, they were under such breezes 
as promised to enable them to close before long with the fleets. 
So, virtually, the momentous voyage was over. The weather 
and upon that, in such undertakings, the hopes of nations must 
rest—the weather had favored the enterprise. But the pest 
of modern armies had not relented. The cholera had followed 
the men into the transports. Many sickened on board the 
troop-ships whilst they were still off Varna or Baljik, and were 
carried back to die on shore. During the voyage many more 
fell ill, and many died. . 
~ But Marshal St. Arnaud, whose illness scarce three days be- 
fore seemed bringing him fast to his end, was now 


St. Arnaud’s 


_sudden recov- almost suddenly restored, and, on the morning of | 


ery. ° 


the 13th, he was like a man in health. During the 
interval of five days in which the Marshal’s illness had invest- 
The progress CM his English colleague with a supreme control, 
made by Lord . [ord Raglan had used to the full the occasion which 
Raglan during se ° : 

the Marsha’'s' Fortune thus gave him. In that time he had re- 
eee pressed the efforts of the French Generals who 
strove to bring the enterprise to a stop; he had committed the 


Allies to a descent upon the enemy’s shores—on his shores to 


~~ 


408 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XXXVIIIL. 


the north of Sebastopol; he had reconnoitred the coast, he had 
chosen the place for a landing, and meanwhile he had drawn 
the fleets on, so that now when men looked from the decks, 
they could see the thin strip of beach where the soldiery of 
the Allies were to land. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


ConcERNING the country which they were going to invade 
Ourignoranee the Allies were poorly informed. Of Sebastopol, 
of the country: the goal of the enterprise, they knew little, except 
my's strength. that it was a great military port and arsenal, and 
was deemed impregnable toward the sea. Respecting the 
province generally, it was known by means of books and maps 
that Crim Tartary, or ‘the Crimea,’ as people now called it, was 
a peninsula situate between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof; 
and there was a theory—not perfectly coinciding with the truth 
—that the only dry communication with the main land was by 
the isthmus of Perekop. » It was understood that the north of 
the peninsula had the character of an elevated steppe, that to- 
ward the south it was rocky and mountainous, and that the 
undulating downs which connected the steppe with the mount- 
ainous region of the south were seamed with small rivers flow- 
ing westward from the summits of the highland district. It 
was believed that the main of the inhabitants were Tartars, 
men holding to the Moslem faith. Of the enemy’s forces in 
this country the Allies, in a sense, were ignorant; for, although 
the information which had come round to them by the aid of 
the Foreign Office was in reality well founded, they did not be- 
lieve at the time that they could at all rely upon it, and there- 
fore they were nearly as much at fault as if they had had no 
clew. They knew, however, that the peninsula was a province 
of Russia, that Russia was a great military power, that, so long . 
as three months ago, the invasion had been counseled in print, 
and that afterward the determination to undertake it had been 
given out aloud to the world. From these rudiments, and from 
what could be seen from the decks of the ships, they inferred 
that, either upon their landing, or on some part of the road be- 
tween the landing-ground and Sebastopol, they would find the 
enemy in strength. 

But beyond this little was known; and the imagination of 


- Coap. XXXVIII.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 409 


This givesto men was left to range so free that, although they 
the expedition were in the midst of their ‘19th century,’ with all its 
the character : ; watts es 
of anadven- prim facts and statistics, the enterprise’ took some- 
be thing of the character of adventure belonging to 
earlier ages. Common, sensible, fanciless men, men wise with 
the cynic wisdom of London clubs, were now by force turned 
into venturers, intent as Argonauts of old in gazing upon the 
shores of a strange land, to which they were committing their 
lives. From many a crowded deck they strained their eyes to 
pierce the unknown.: ‘They could not see troops. They saw 
a road along the shore. | Now and then there appeared a peas- 
ant with a cart. Now and then a horseman riding at full speed. 
Neither peasant nor horseman seemed ever to pause in his duty 
that he might cast a glance of wonder at the countless armada 
which was gathering in upon his country. At the northern 
end of the bay there was a bright little town. Maps showed 
that this was Eupatoria. | 
At noon, on the 18th, the English fleet had drawn near to 
Occupation of this port of Eupatoria. There were no Russian 
Eupatoria. § forces there except a few convalescent soldiers; 
and, the place being defenseless, Colonel Trochu and Colonel 
Steele, accompanied by Mr. Calvert, the interpreter, were dis- 
patched to summon it. The governor or head man of the place 
was an official personage in a high state of discipline. He had 
before his eyes the armed navies of the Allies, with the count- 
less sails of their convoys; and to all that vast armament he 
had nothing to oppose except the forms of office. But to him 
the forms of office seemed all sufficing, and on these he still 
calmly relied; so, when the summons was delivered, he insisted 
upon fumigating it according to the health regulations of the 
little port. When he understood that the Western Powers 
intended to land, he said that decidedly they might do so, but 
he explained that it would be necessary for them to land at the 
Lazaretto, and consider themselves in strict quarantine. 
_ On the following day the place was occupied by a small 
body of English troops. The few Russian inhabitants of the 
place, being mainly or entirely official personages, had all gone 
away, but the Tartar inhabitants remained; and although these> 
men did not exhibit, as some might have expected, any eager 
or zealous affection for the allies of the Caliph, they seemed in- 
clined to be friendly. Thoughtful men cared deeply to know 
whether between these natives and the Allies the relation of 
buyer and seller could be established ; for it was of vital mo- 
ment to the success of the expedition that the Allies should 
be ae to obtain supplies of cattle and forage in the invaded 
ou. .—S 


410 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XXXVUL 


country; and it was probable that much would turn upon the 
success of the first attempt to make purchases from the people 
of the country. The first experiment which was made in this 
direction elicited a curious proof of the difficulty which there 
is in causing mighty nations to act with the forethought of a 
single traveler. It was to be expected that, at the commence- 
ment of any attempted intercourse, the willingness of the na- 
tives to sell would depend upon their being tempted by the 
coins to which they were accustomed, because just at first they 
would not only be ignorant of the value of foreign money, but 
would also dread the consequence of being found im possession 
of coin plainly received from the invaders. Yet.the precaution 
of bringing Russian money had been forgotten by the public 
authorities; and when Mr. Hamilton, of the ‘ Britannia,’ was 
preparing to land, with a view of endeavoring to begin a buy- 
ing and selling intercourse with the natives, he had nothing to 
offer except English sovereigns. It chanced, however, that 
there were two or three English travelers on board the flag- 
ship, and that these men (foreseeing the likelihood of their hav- 
ing to buy horses or make other purchases from the natives of 
the invaded country) had supplied themselves with some of 
the gold Russian coins called ‘ half imperials,’ which were to be 
obtained without difficulty at Constantinople. The travelers 
—Sir Edward Colebrooke, I think, was one of them—advanced 
as many of these as they could spare to the public authorities ; 
and Mr. Hamilton being thus enabled to land with a small sup- 
ply of the magic half imperials, and being, besides, a good-tem- 
pered, humorous man, with a tendency to make cordial speeches 
in English to all his fellow-creatures alike, whether Russian, or 
Tartar, or Greek, he was able to make a merry beginning of 
that intercourse with the natives which was destined to be- 
come a fruitful source of strength to the Allied armies. The 
gains made by the first sellers soon drew fresh supplies into the 
place from the surrounding country ; the commissariat after- 
ward began its operations in the town, and in time a good, 
lasting market was opened to the invaders. 

After receiving the surrender of Eupatoria on the afternoon 
“he whole Ar. Of the 18th, the assembled armada moved down to- 
mada gathers ward the south. All day there were sailing vessels 
oward the P : : . 
chosen land- approaching from a distance, and closing at last with 
DE piace. the French fleet, but before night (with the excep- 
tion, it is believed, of two or three small lagging transports) 
the three fleets, and the host of vessels which they convoyed, 
were anchored near Old Fort in Kalamita Bay. The united 
armada extended in a line parallel with the coast, and in a dis 


Cuap. XXXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 411 


rection, therefore, not far from north and south. The French 
and the Turkish fleets were on the south or right-hand side. 
The British fleet took the north, and formed the left of the 
Allied line. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 


Tue ground chosen by Lord Raglan for the landing of all 
The landing. the Allied forces is five or six miles north of the 
eieke. Bulganak River. It gained its name of ‘Old Fort’ 
from an indication appearing on the maps, rather than from 
any slight traces of the structure then remaining. Along this 
part of the coast the cliffs rise to a height of from 60 to 100 
feet, and for the most part they impend too closely over the 
sea to allow much room for the beach. Near ‘Old Fort,’ how- 
ever, the high grounds so recede that at first sight they appear 
to embrace a small bay or inlet of the sea, but upon a nearer 
approach it is perceived that the inner part of the seeming bay 
is a salt-water lake, and that this lake is divided from the sea 
by a low, narrow strip of beach. A little farther north the 
same disposition of land and water recurs, for there also an- 
other salt lake, called the Lake of Kamishlu,is divided from the 
sea by a low, narrow strip of beach a mile and a half in length. 
The first-mentioned strip of beach, namely, the strip opposite 
to Old Fort, was the one which Lord Raglan had chosen for 
the landing of all the Allied armies. 

It was arranged that a buoy should be placed off the centre 
of the chosen ground to mark the boundary between the French 
and the English flotilla. The French and the Turkish vessels 
were to be on the south of the buoy, the British on the north ; 
and in the evening and night of the 13th the ships and trans- 
ports of the three nations drew in as near as they could to 
their appointed landing-places. 

But in the night of the 13th there occurred a transaction 
Step taken by Which threatened to ruin the whole plan for the 
the French in landing, and even to bring the harmony between 
momen the French and the English forces into grievous 
jeopardy. During the darkness, the French placed the buoy 
opposite—not to the centre, but—to the extreme north, of the 
chosen landing-ground ; and when morning dawned, it appear- 
ed that the English ships and transports, though really i in their 
proper places, were on the wrong side of the ‘buoy, or, rather, 


‘SAITTY FHL a0 
SAOVId-O9NIGNVI GH, 


*Pepury Ystsuy oy} s10YA punoss sy, “7 “A 


‘ong ayy paovd | 


qoue1ry oy} ‘yystu oy} Suranp ‘a1ayM yods oy, ‘qd 


Jo sovytd 


“aq 0} sum AON YY o1oyA Jods oy,T, *O 
“SOIULIV Pol[[B oy} 
SUIPUL] OY} TOF WasOyD punols oy, “q ‘VW 
e 


Cuap. XXXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ' 418 


that the buoy was on the wrong side of them. Whether the 
act which created this embarrassment was one resulting from 
sheer mistake on the part of our allies, or from their over- 
greediness for space, or from a scheme more profoundly de- 
signed, it plainly went straight toward the end desired by 
those French officers who had been laboring to bring the en- 
terprise to a stop. For what was to be done? Ifthe En- 
This destroys lish, disregarding the altered position of the buoy, 
the whole plan were to persist in keeping to their assigned landing- 
: “ground, their whole flotilla, their boats and their 
troops, when landed, would be hopelessly mixed up with the 
French, and what might be expected to follow would be ruin- 
ous confusion—nay, even perhaps angry and violent conflict 
between the forces of the Allies. To propose to move the 
buoy, or to get into controversy with the French at such a 
time, would be to delay and imperil the whole undertaking; 
and yet the boundary, as it stood, extruded the English from 
all share in the chosen Janding-ground. It might seem that 
the whole enterprise was again in danger of failure; but again 
a strong will interposed. 

From the moment when Lord Raglan consented to under- 
Sir Edmund take the invasion, he seems to have acted as though 
1x908, he felt that the belief which he entertained of its 
hazardousness was a reason why he should be the more stead- 
fast in his determination to force it on. Nor was he without 
the very counsel that was needed for overcoming this last ob- 
stacle. Lyons, commanding the in-shore squadron of the Brit- 
ish fleet, was intrusted with the direction of our transports 
and the whole management of the landing. Moving long be- 
His way of | fore dawn in the sleepless ‘Agamemnon,’ he saw 
ie deter where the buoy had been placed by the French in 
cy. the night time, and gathered in an instant all the 
perilous import of the change. He was more than a mere per- 
former of duty, for he was a man driving under a passionate 
force of purpose. Without stopping to indulge his anger, he 
darted upon the means of dealing with the evil. He had ob- 
served that about a mile to the north of ‘Old Fort’ there was 
that strip of beach before spoken of, which divided the Lake 
of Kamishlu from the sea. There Lord Raglan and he now 
New landing, determined that the landing of the British forces 
Phe Rnelch at Should take place. It was true that this plan would 
Kamishlu. . sever the French from the British forces during 
the operation of landing, but the evil thus encountered was a 
hundred-fold less grave than the evil avoided; for, even in the 
face of an enemy, the separation of the French from the En-,; 


414 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XXXIX. 


glish would have been better than dispute or confusion; and, 
moreover, the observations of the previous day had led the 
Allies to conjecture that the enemy did not intend to resist 
the landing. The morning showed that this conjecture was 
sound ; therefore, great as was the danger from which the Al- 
liance had been delivered, it turned out in the result that the 
immense advantage of having two extended landing-places in- 
stead of one was not counterbalanced by any evil resulting 
from the severance of the two armies. 

In point of security from molestation on the part of the ene- 
my, both of the two landing-places were happily chosen. Both 
of them were on shores which allowed the near approach of 
the fleets, and placed the whole operation under cover of their 
guns. Also, both landing-places were protected on the inland 
side by the salt lakes, which interposed a physical obstacle in 
the way of any front attack by the enemy; and the access to 
the flanks of the disembarking armies was by strips of land 
so narrow that they could be easily defended against any force 
of infantry or cavalry. It is true that the line of disembarka- 
tion of either army could have been enfiladed by artillery 
placed on the heights; but then those heights could be more 
or less searched by a fire from the ships, and the enemy had 
not attempted to prepare for himself any kind of defense on 
the high ground. 

The necessity of having to carry the English flotilla to a 
Position of the new landing-place occasioned of course a painful 
Moted ttre dislocation of the arrangements which had already 
change. been acted upon by the commanders of the trans- 
ports; but, after much less delay and much less confusion than 
might have been expected to result from a derangement so 
great and so sudden, the position of the English vessels was 
adapted to the change. 

Meanwhile few of the thousands on board understood the 
The cause and Change which had been effected, or even saw that 
che ae they were brought to a new landing-ground. They 
kept secret. imagined that it was.the better method or greater 
quickness of the French which was giving them the triumph 
of being the first to land. Both Lord Raglan and Lyons 
were too steadfast in the maintenance of the alliance to think 
of accounting for the seeming tardiness of the English by 
causing the truth to be known; and even to this day it is 
commonly believed that the English army effected its landing 
at Old Fort. . 

The bend of the coast-line at Kalamita Bay is of such a char- 
acter that a spectator on board a vessel close in-shore is bound- 


Cuar. XXXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 415 


Position of the 4 in his view of the sea toward the south by the 
in-shore squad- headland near the Alma; but if he stands a little 
a way out to sea, the coast opens, and he then com- 
mands an unobstructed view home to the entrance of the Se- 
bastopol harbor. So, whilst the in-shore squadrons approach- 
ed the beach so closely as to be able to cover the landing, the 
bulk of the English fleet, commanded by Dundas in person, 
lay far enough out to be able to command the whole of the 
Ofthe main vast bay from Kupatoria to Sebastopol, keeping up 
English fleet. an unbroken chain of communication from cape to 
cape, and always held ready to engage the Russian fleet if by 
chance it should come out and give battle.!. Detached vessels 
reconnoitred the coast and practiced theit gunners upon every 
encampment or gathering of troops which seemed to be with- 
in range. As though in the arrogant, yet quiet assertion of 
an ascendant beyond dispute, one solitary English ship, watch- 
ing off the Sebastopol harbor, stood sentry over the enemy’s 
fleet. Men had heard of the dominion of the seas, now they 
saw it. 

The plan of the English disembarkation was imitated from 
Plan ofthe the one adopted by Sir Ralph Abercromby when 
mmedting. he made his famous descent upon the coast of 
Egypt; and it was based upon the principle of so ranging the 
transports and the boats as that the relative position of each 
company whilst it was being rowed toward the shore should 
correspond with that which it would have to take when form- 
ed upon the beach.? 

All the naval arrangements for the landing were undertaken 
by Sir Edmund Lyons; but, to dispose the troops on the 
beach—to gain a lodgment—to take up a position, and, if nec- 
essary, to intrench it--these were duties which specially de- 
volved upon the Quartermaster-General. The officer who held 

___ this post was General Airey; and since it was his 

General Airey. f: ; i pit,'s any bos eee 
ate to take a grave part in the business of the war, 

and to share with Lord Raglan his closest counsels, it seems 
useful to speak here at once—not of the quality of his mind 
‘(for that will best be judged by looking to what he did, and 


1Tt has been already explained that the French men-of-war were doing 
duty as transports, and were not, therefore, in a condition to engage the ene- 
my. There were people who thoughtlessly blamed Dundas for not taking 
part with the in-shore squadron in the bustle of the landing. Of course his 
duty was to hold his off-shore squadron in readiness for an engagement with 
the Sebastopol fleet; and this he took care to do. 

* The plans and the papers of instructions for the landing will perhaps be 
given in the Appendix; but I abstain from giving a detailed account of the 
operation, because it was not resisted by the enemy. 


476 ~ INVASION. OF THE CRIMEA. [Cnar. XXXIX, 


what he omitted to do), but rather—to speak of those circum- 
stances of his life, and those outer signs and marks of his na- 
ture which any by-stander in the camp would be likely to hear 
of or see. ti 

-A strictly military career in peace-time is a poor schooling 
for the business of war; and the rough change which had once 
broken in upon Airey’s professional life helped to make him 
more able in war than men who had passed all their lives in 
going round and round with the wheels. Airey was holding 
one of the offices at the Horse-Guards when he was suddenly 
called upon by his relative, Colonel Talbot, the then almost fa- 
mous recluse of Upper Canada, to choose whether he and his 
‘young wife would accept a great territorial inheritance, with 
the condition of dwelling deep in the forest, far away from all 
cities and towns. Airey loved his profession, and what made 
it the more difficult for him to quit it was the favor with which 
he was looked upon by the Duke of Wellington. It chanced 
that he had once been called upon to lay before the Duke the 
maps and statements required for showing the progress of a 
campaign then going on against the Caffres, and the Duke was 
so delighted with the perfect clearness of the view which Ai- 
rey was able to impart to him, that he instantly formed a high 
opinion of an officer who could look with so keen a glance 
upon a distant campaign, and convey a lucid idea of it to his 
chief. Airey communicated to the Duke of Wellington Colo- 
nel Talbot’s proposal, and explained the dilemma in which he 
was placed. ‘You must go,’ said the Duke; ‘of course you 
‘must go; it is your duty to go; but we will manage so that, 
‘whenever you choose, you shall be able to come back to us.’ 
Airey went to Canada. It had been no part of Colonel Tal- 
bot’s plan to smooth the path of his chosen inheritor. He 
gave him a vast territory. He gave him no home. 

Isolated in the midst of the forest, and with no better shel- 
ter than a log hut half built, the staff officer, hitherto expert 
in the prim traditions of the Horse-Guards, now found him- 
self so circumstanced that the health, nay, the very life of those 
most dear to him was made to depend upon his power to be- 
come a good laborer. He dould not have hoped to keep his 
English servants a day if he had begun by sitting still himself 
and ordering them to do the rough work to which they were 
unaccustomed; so he worked with his own hands, in the faith 
that his example would make every kind of hard work seem 
honorable to his people; and, being endued with an almost 
violent love of bodily exertion, he was not only equal to this 
new life, but came to delight in it. Clad coarsely during the 


Cuar. XXXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA; 414} 


day, he was only to be distinguished from the other workmen 
by his greater activity and greater power of endurance. Many 
English gentlemen have done the like of this, but commonly 
they have ended by becoming altogether just that which they 
seemed in their working hours—by becoming, in short, mere 
husbandmen. It was not so with Airey. When his people 
came to speak to him in the evening, they always found him 
transformed. Partly by the subtle change which they were 
able to see in his manner, partly even by so outward a thing 
as the rigorous change in his dress, but most of all, perhaps, 
by his natural ascendant, they were prevented from forgetting 
that their fellow-laborer of the morning was their. master—a 
master to whom they were every day growing more and more 
attached, but still their master. He therefore maintained his 
station. He did more; he gained great authority over the 

eople about him; and when he bade farewell to the wilder- 
ness, he had become like a chief of old times—a man working 
hard with his own hands, yet ruling others with a firm com- 
mand. » : 

It was during a period of some years that Airey had: thus 
wrestled with the hardships of forest life. At the end of that 
’ time Colonel Talbot died, and Airey, then coming home to 
England, resumed his military career. Those who know any 
thing of the real business of war will easily believe that this 
episode in the life: of General Airey was more likely to fit him 
for the exigencies of a. campaign and for the command of men 
than thrice the same length of time consumed in the revolving 
labors of a military department; nay, perhaps they will think 
that, next to a campaign, this manful struggle with the wil- 
derness was the very work which would be the most sure to 
set a mind free from the habits, the by-laws, and the petty reg: | 
ulations of office. . 

Before the expedition left England, Lord Raglan had asked 
Airey to be his Quartermaster-General. Airey, preferring 
field-duty with the divisions, had begged that some other might 
be appointed, and Lord Raglan acceded to his wish; but when, 
on the eve of the departure of the expedition from Varna, 
Lord De Ros returned to England, the Quartermaster-Gener- 
alship was again pressed upon Airey in terms which made it 
unbecoming for him to refuse the burden. His loyalty and 
affectionate devotion to Lord Raglan were without bounds, 
and he imagined that he was always acting with a strict def- 
erence to the wishes of his chief. But then Airey was a man 
of great ardor, of a strong will; and having, also, a rapid, de- 
cisive judgment, he certainly accustomed himself to put very 

S 2 


418 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XXXIX 


swift constructions upon Lord Raglan’s words. No one ever 
used to see him in the pain of suspense between two opinions. 
Either he really knew with minuteness Lord Raglan’s views, 
or else he was so prone to take a great deal upon himself that, 
in his zeal for the public service, he might almost be called un- 

scrupulous. Men who were hesitating and trying to make 
out what was the path of their duty soon came to know that 
Airey was the officer who would thrust away their doubts for 
them, because, rightly or wrongly, whether with or without 
due authority, he used to speak in such a way as to untie or 
to cut every knot. He was himself, it would seem, uncon- 
scious of exercising so much power as he really did; but it is 
certain enough that those who complained of his ascendency 
were not very wrong in believing that he held a great sway; 
for though, being ouileless and single-hearted, he always liked 
to receive his first impulsions from the chief, yet, when once 
he was thus set moving, his strong will used to burst into ac- 
tion with all its own proper force, and very much, too, in its 
own direction. 

Notwithstanding this proneness to action, his manner had 
all the repose which is thought to be a sign of power. He did 
not in general speak at all until he could speak decisively; and 
he was more accustomed than most other Englishmen are to 
use that degree of precision and completeness of language 
which makes men content to act on it. Officers hesitating 
in the pain of suspense used to long to, hear the tramp of his 
coming — used to long to catch sight of his eager, swooping 
crest (it was always strained forward and intent)—his keen, 
salient, sharp-edged features —his firm, steady eye— for they 
knew that he was the man who would release them from their 
doubts. He was gifted by nature with the kind of eloquence 
that it is good for a soldier to have. His oral directions to 
those in authority under him were models of imperative dic- 
tion; but when he spoke of what he had seen, the vivid pic- 
tures he drew were marked with a sharpness of outline hardly 
consistent with a perfect freedom from exaggeration: they 

wanted the true English haze. He was too eager for action 
to be able to stand still weighing phrases; and Ti imagine that 
he did not even know how to try the exact str eneth and im- 
port of words in the way that a lettered man does. Upon the 
whole, his qualities were of such a kind as to make it impos- 
sible for him to be without great weight in the army. His 
friends would call him a man plainly fitted for high command ; 
his adversaries would say that power in his hands was likely 
to be used dangerously; but all would alike agree that, whether 


Cuap. XXXIX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 419 


for good or whether for evil, he had from nature the means of 
impressing his own will on troops. 

The arrangements of the French were like those of the En- 
The first day's Qlish; and at half past eight o’clock on the morn- 
landing. ing of the 14th of September, 1854, their first boat 
touched the shore. The English had made such good haste to 
retrieve the time spent in moving to their new landing-place, 
that very soon afterward their disembarkation began. 

The morning was fine; the sea nearly smooth. The troops 
of the Light Division were in the boats, and the seamen were 
at their oars, expecting the signal. The signal was given, and 
instantly from along the whole of the first line of transports an 
array of boats freighted with troops—boats ranged upon a 
front of more than a mile—darted swiftly toward the shore. 
It was said that the boat commanded by Vesey of the ‘ Britan- 
nia’ was the first to touch the beach. He was an officer who 
would do all man could to be foremost. 

As soon as the boats had landed, the soldiers stepped ashore 
and began to form line upon the beach; but presently after- 
ward they piled arms. There were some Tartar peasants pass- 
ing along the coast-road with small bullock-wagons. The wag- 
oners showed little or no alarm, and, knowing that they could 
not move off quickly with bullocks, they did not attempt to 
get away. Apparently they were not struck with any sense 
of unfairness when they saw that the English took possession 
of the wagons; and yet it could scarcely have been explained 
to them at that moment (as it afterward would be) that every 
thing taken by the English from private owners would be paid 
for at a just price. One of the wagons was laden with small 
pears, and the soldiers amused themselves with the fruit whilst 
the natives stood and scanned their invaders. 

After a while, many of the battalions which had landed were 
ordered forward to occupy the hill on our right, and thence- 
forth, during all the day, the acclivity was sparkling with the 
bayonets of the columns successively ascending it. But what 
were those long strings of soldiery now beginning to come 
down from the hill-side and to wind their way back toward 
the beach ? and what were the long white burdens horizontally 
carried by the men? Already? Already, on this same day ? 
Yes. Sickness still clung to the army. Of those who only 
this morning ascended the hill with seeming alacrity, many 
now came down thus sadly borne by: their comrades. They 
were carried on ambulance stretchers, and a blanket was over 
them. Those whose faces remained uncovered were still alive. 
Those whose faces had been covered over by their blanket 


420 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ([Cuar. XXXIX, 


were dead. Near the foot of the hill the men began to dig 
graves. | 

But, meanwhile, the landing went merrily on. It might be 
Zealanden. COmMputed that, if every man in the navy had only 
ergy ofthe performed his strict duty, the landing would have 
ares taken some weeks. It was the supererogation, 
the zeal, the abounding zeal, which seemed to achieve the 
work. No sailor seemed to work like a man who was merely 
obeying—no officer stood looking on as if he were merely com- 
manding ; and, though all was concert and discipline, yet every 
man was laboring with the whole strength of his own separate 
will. And all this great toil went on with strange good-hu- 
mor, nay, even with thoughtful kmdness toward the soldiers. 
The seamen knew that it concerned the comfort and the health 
of the soldiers to be landed dry, so they lifted or handed the 
men ashore with an almost tender care. Yet not without 
mirth; nay, not without laughter far heard, when, as though 
they were giant maidens, the tall Highlanders of the 42nd 
placed their hands in the hands of the sailor, and sprang by his 
aid to the shore, their kilts floating out wide while they leaped. 

After midday the sea began to lose its calmness, and before 
sunset the surf was strong enough to make the disembarkation 
difficult, and in some degree hazardous. Yet, by the time the 
day closed, the French had landed their 1st, 2nd, and 8rd divi- 
sions of infantry, together with eighteen guns, and the English 
had got on shore all their infantry divisions, and some part of 
their field artillery. 

Some few of the English regiments remained on the beach, 
Wet night's but the rest of them had been marched up to the 
piyouss, high grounds toward the south, and they there biv- 
ouacked. At night there fell heavy rain, and it lasted many 
hours. The men were without their tents.1 Lying in wet 
pools or in mud, their blankets clinging heavy with water, our 
young soldiers began the campaign. The French soldiery 
were provided with what they called dog-tents—tents not a 
yard high, but easily carried, and yielding shelter to soldiers 
creeping into them. It was always a question in the French 
army whether these tents gave the men more health and com- 
fort than they could find in the open air. 

The next morning was fine, but the surf had so much in- 
Continuance creased that for several hours the landing was sus- 
ofthelanding. pended. After the middle of the day it became 

’ This was because there were no sufficing means of land transport for 


conveying the camp equipage toward Sebastopol. After the 14th the tents 
were landed, but they were afterward reshipped. 


Cap. XXXTX.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 421 


practicable, though still somewhat difficult, to go on with the 
work, and great efforts were made to land the English cavalry 
and the rest of the artillery, with the appertaining horses and 
equipages. | 

Unless a man has stood in the admiring crowd which gath- 
ers to see the process of landing one horse upon an open sea- 
shore; and unless, whilst he carries in his mind the labor and 
energy brought to bear upon this single object, he can imagine 
the same toil gone through again and again, and yet again, till 
it has been repeated many hundreds of times upon a mile and 
a half of beach, he will hardly know what work must be done 
before a general can report to his Government that he has 
landed upon an open coast with a thousand cavalry and sixty 
guns ready for the field. By labor never once intermitted 
- (except when darkness or the state of the sea forbade it), and 
continued from the morning of the 14th until the evening of 
the 18th, the whole of the English land force, which had been 
embarked at Varna (together now with Cathcart’s Division), 
was safely landed upon the enemy’s coast. 

The result then was, that under circumstances of weather 
Itscomplee Which were, upon the whole, favorable, and with 
Rion; the advantage of encountering no opposition from 
the enemy, an English force of some 26,000 infantry and artil- 
lerymen, with more than a thousand mounted cavalry, and six- 
ty guns, had been landed in the course of five September days ; 
_ and although the force thus put ashore was without those vast 
means of land transport which would be needed for regular 
operations in the interior, and was obliged to rely upon the 
attendant fleet for the continuance of its supplies, it was nev- 
by the En- ertheless so provided as to be able to move along 
a the coast carrying with it its first reserve of ammu- 
nition, and food enough for three days. 

The operation was conducted with an almost faultless skill, 
and (until a firm lodgment had been gained) it proceeded in 
the way that was thought to be the right one for landing in 
the face of the enemy. Though the surf was at times some- 
what heavy, not a man was lost. 

With the French, who had no cavalry and a scanty supply 
of artillery horses, the disembarkation was a com- 
paratively easy task; and if they had so desired it, 
the French might have been ready to march long before the 
English; but, knowing that their allies, having cavalry, would 
necessarily take a good deal of time, they were without a mo- 
tive for hurrying, and, during the whole of the five days which 
the English took for their disembarkation, a like work was 
seen going on at the French landing-place. 

* 


by the French 5 


422 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XL. 


The Turks did the work of landing very well; and, indeed, 
they quickly showed that they had an advantage 
over the French and the English in their more fa- 
miliar acquaintance with the mode of life proper to warfare. 
They landed their camp equipage; for, with them, the carriage 
of tents is a very simple business. ‘T'wo soldiers, one at each 
end, bear the pole of a tent between them, and the canvas is 
carried by others in turns. So early as the 15th, the first day 
after that on which the landing began, the Turks were com- 
fortably encamped on the ground assigned to them; and whilst 
the young troops of France and England were still sitting 
wretched and chilled by the wet of their night’s bivouac, the 
warlike Osmanlies seemed to be in their natural home. Soli- 
man, who commanded them, was able to welcome and honor 
the guests who went to visit him in his tent as hospitably as 
though he were in the audience-hall of his own pashalic. He 
“had all his tents well pitched; and his men, one could see, 
were still a true Moslem soldiery—men with arms and accou- 
trements bright, yet not forgetful of prayer. He had a supply 
of biscuit and of cartridges, and a good stock of horses, some 
feeding, some saddled, and ready for instant use. He was not 
without coffee and tobacco. His whole camp gave signs of a 
race which gathers from a great tradition, going on from fa- 
ther to son, the duties and the simple arts of a pious and war- 
faring life. 


by the Turks. 


CHAPTER XL. 


WueEn the people of the neighboring district came to see 

Deputations the strength of the armies descending upon their 
from the Tar- goast, the head men of the villages began to pre- 
tar villages to ° 
the English sent themselves at the quarters of the Allies. The 
head-quarters. first of these deputations was received by Lord 
taglan in the open air. The men were going up to head- 
quarters when they passed near a group of officers on foot in 
blue frock coats, and they learned that the one whose maimed 
arm spoke of other wars was the English General. ‘They ap- 
proached him respectfully, but without submissiveness of an 
abject kind. Neither in manner, dress, appearance, nor lan- 
guage, would these men seem very strange to a traveler ac- 
quainted with Constantinople or any of the other cities of the 
Levant. They wore the pelisse or long robe, and, although 


s 


Cuap. XL. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 423 


their head-gear was of black lamb-skin, it was much of the 
same shape as the Turkish fez. They spoke with truthfulness 
and dignity, allowing it to appear that the invasion was not 
distasteful to them, but abstaining from all affectation of enthu- 
siastic sympathy. They seemed to understand war and its 
exigencies; for they asked tlie interpreters to say that such of 
their possessions as might be wanted by the English army 
were at Lord Raglan’s disposal. Pleased with the demeanor 
of the men, as well as with the purport of their speech, Lord 
Raglan told them that he would avail himself of some of their 
possessions, more especially their wagons and draught animals, 
but that every thing taken for the use of the English army 
would be paid for at a proper rate. Much to Lord Raglan’s 
surprise (for he was not accustomed to the people of the East), 
the head man of the village resisted the idea of the people be- 
ing paid, and anxiously pressed the interpreter to say that their 
possessions were yielded up as free gifts. 

Pure ignorance of the invaded country gave charm to every 
Result ofex. “iscovery tending to throw light upon the charac- 
ploringexpe- ter and pursuits of the inhabitants; and if our sol- 
mahehs, diery had found in the villages high altars set up 
for human sacrifices, they would scarcely have been more sur- 
prised than they were when, prying into the mysteries of this 
obscure Crim Tartary, they came upon traces of modern refine- 
ment and cultivated taste. In some of the houses at Kentu- 
gan there were pianos; and in one of them a music-book, lying 
open and spread upon the frame, seemed to show that the 
owner had been hurried in her flight. But the owners of these 
dwellings must have been official personages. The mass of the 
country people were Tartars. 

In the villages there was abundance of agricultural wealth. 
The main want of the country was water; but Airey caused 
wells to be sunk. 

The English system of payment for supplies rapidly began 
to bear its usual fruit, and the districts from which the people 
came in to barter with us were every day extending. 

In their passage across the Euxine our battalions had not 
The English yet been followed by that evil horde who are ac- 
wade freciom customed to cling to an army, selling strong, nox- 
from crime. jous drinks to the men. ‘kherefore our army was 
without crime.! It was with something more than mercy, it 
was with kindness and gentle courtesy, that the people of the 
villages were treated by our soldiery, and the interpreters had 


1 This statement, broad as it looks, is meant to be taken literally, and to 
be regarded as a statement taken from the right official source. 


424. INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XL, 


to strain the resources of the English tongue in order to con- 
vey a faint apprehension of the figures of speech in which the 
women were expressing their gratitude. Their chief favorites, 
Kindly inter- 1 seems, were the men of the Ritle Brigade. Quar- 
sepess veresh tered for a day or two in one of the villages, these 
and the vi- Soldiers made up for the want of a common tongue 
tegere. by acts of kindness. They helped the women in 
their household work, and the women, pleased and proud, 
made signs to the stately ‘ Rifles’ to do this and do that, exult- 
ing in the obedience which they were able to win from men so 
grand and comely. When the interpreter came, and was asked 
to construe what the women were saying so fast and so eager- 
ly, it appeared that they were busy with similes and metaphors, 
and that the Rifles were made out to be heroes more strong 
than lions, more gentle than young lambs. 

A dreadful change came over that village. The Rifles were 
Outrages per. Withdrawn. ‘The Zouaves marched in. There fol- 
petrated by lowed spoliation, outrage, horrible cruelty. When 
the Zouaves. those tidings came to Lord Raglan, he was standing 
on the shore’with several of his people about him. He turned 
scarlet with shame and anger. The yoke of the alliance had 
wrung him. 

In general, it would fall within the duty of light horse to 
The duty of | Sweep the face of the invaded territory and bring 
coantrvfer in supplies; but the French were without cavalry ; 
supplies. and although the body of horse which we had land- 
ed was called ‘the Light Brigade,’ the Lancers, the Hussars, 
and the Light Dragoons of which it consisted were not of such 
a weight and quality, and were not so practiced in foraging, as 
to be all at once well fitted for this kind of service. Besides, 
it was plain that in advancing through the enemy’s country 
the power of the invaders would have to be measured by the 
arm in which they were weakest, and a material loss in our 
_ small, brilliant force of cavalry might bring ruin upon the whole 
expedition. There was the Commissariat. The officers of that 
department were gentlemen taken from a branch of the Treas- 
ury; and although they could make requisitions on the military 
authorities with more or less hope of a result, they had no force 
of their own with which to act. The regimental officers were 
of course busied with their respective corps. Yet it was cer- 
tain that the power of operating effectively with the English 
army would depend upon its obtaining a large addition to its 
existing means of land transport. In the result, it was the 
chief of one of the business departments of our Head-Quarter 
Staff who pressed forward into the gap, and succeeded in 


Cuap. XL.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 425 


achieving the work upon which, in a great degree, the fate of 
the campaign seemed likely to hinge. 

From the first, General Airey had seen that the mere inert 
Airey's quice presence of armies in an invaded province is a thing 
perception of ~very short of conquest. Conquest, he knew, must 

1e need to get ° ° - 
means ofland generally rest upon the success with which supplies 
Se can be drawn from the invaded province; and he 
never forgot that, unless the country could be made to yield 
means of land carriage, the Allies would have to creep timidly 
along the shore, tethered fast by the short string of carts with 
which they had come provided; therefore, even within a few 
minutes from the time when the landing began, he was already 
striving to gain—not the mere occupation of the soil—not the 
mere license of the troops to stand or lie down on the ground 
—but that hold, that military grasp of the country which 
would make it help to sustain the invasion. When only afew 
battalions of the Light Division had landed and were begin- 
ning to form on the beach, he rode up to the high ground on 
His seizure of OUT Tight, and there, at. some distance, he caught 
agonvey. sight of a long string of wagons escorted by a body 
of Cossacks. Instantly he rode back to the beach, got Colonel 
Lysons to give him two companies of the 23rd Fusileers, and 
with these advanced quickly in skirmishing order. The Cos- 
sacks. tried hard to save the convoy by using the points of 
their lances against the bullocks, and even against the drivers, 
but, the Fusileers advancing and beginning to open fire, the 
Cossacks at length retreated, leaving Airey in possession of 
just that kind of prize which the army most needed—a prize 
of some seventy or eighty wagons, with their oxen and drivers 
complete. Never ceasing to think it was vital to have more 
His continuea 2Nd more means of transport, Airey afterward dis- 
overs patched the officers of his department in all direc- 
tions to bring in supplies. Sending Captain Sankey to Tuzla 
and Sak, he thence got 105 wagons. Sending Captain Hamil- 
ton to Bujuk Aktash, to Beshi Aktash, to Tenish, and Sak, he 
got 67 camels, 253 horses, 45 cart-loads of poultry, barley, and 
other supplies, with more than a thousand head of cattle and 
sheep.! At a later date, and when the army was moving, he 
took 25 wagons from a village near the line of march. One 
day, moreover, it happened that Airey sent his aid-de-camp 
Nolan to explore for water, and, though he was without a cay- 
alry escort, Nolan boldly cut in upon a convoy of 80 govern- 
ment wagons laden with flour, and seized the whole of it. In 


- 1 In some, but not all of these expeditions, Sankey and Hamilton had cav- 
alry escorts. 


426 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLI. 


all some 350 wagons were obtained, with all their 
teams and with their Tartar drivers. 

In general, the appropriation of the resources of the country 
is a business which ranges among mere commissariat annals; 
but in order to this invasion the seizing of means of land trans- 
port was a business hardly otherwise than vital. Even as’ it 
was, the army was brought to hard straits for want of suffi- 
cing draught power; and without the cattle and wagons which 
were seized whilst the troops were landing, the course of events 
must have been other than what it was. 

Those Tartar drivers of whom I have spoken were a wild 
people, little fit, as it seemed, for the obedience and patient toil 
exacted from camp-followers; but the descent of the Allies 
upon the coast was the first military operation that they had 
witnessed, and, before their amazedness ceased, they found 
themselves unaccountably marshaled and governed, and invol- 
untarily taking their humble part in the enterprise of the West- 
The Tartar ern Powers. Many of them wore the same expres- 
drivers. ~ sion of countenance as hares that are taken alive, 
and they looked as though they were watching after the right 
moment for escape; but they had fallen, as it were, into a 
great stream, and all they could do was to wonder, and yield, 
and flow on. There were few of those captured lads who had 
strength to withstand the sickness and the hardships of the 
campaign. For the most part they sank and died. 


Their result. 


CHAPTER XLI. 


THERE were now upon the coast of the Crimea some 37,000 
The foreesnow French and Turks,! with sixty-eight pieces of artil- 
on shore, lery, all under the orders of Marshal St. Arnaud ; 
and we saw that 27,000 English, including a full thousand of 
cavalry, and together with sixty guns, had been landed by Lord 
Raglan. Altogether, then, the Allies numbered 63,000 men and 
128 guns. These forces, partly by means of the draught ani- 
mals at their command, and partly by the aid of the soldier 
himself, could carry by land the ammunition necessary for per- 
haps two battles, and the means of subsistence for three days. 
Their provisions beyond those limits were to be replenished 

' 30,204 Frenchmen and 7000 Turks, according to the French accounts. 


Lord Raglan, I believe, thought that the French force was less, and put it at 
27,600. . 


Cuar. XLI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, 427 


The nature of fromthe ships. It was intended, therefore, that the 
Iv whick the fleets should follow the march of the armies, and 
Allies were to. that the invaders, without attempting to dart upon 
make Syodce the inland route which connected the enemy with 
to Sebastopol. St.Petersburg, should move straight upon the north 
side of Sebastopol by following the line of the coast. 

The whole body of-the Allied armies was to operate as a 
‘movable column.’ 

Between an armed body engaged in regular operations, and 
Bl that description of force which the French call a 

parison 4 5 : : : zi 
between regu- ‘movable column,’ the difference is broad; and there 
rat Lae is need to mark it, because the way in which reg- 
ese ular operations are conducted is not even similar 

* to that in which a ‘movable column’ is wielded. 

It is, of course, from the history of continental wars that the 
principle of regular operations in the field is best deduced. A 
prince intending to invade his neighbor’s territory takes care 
to have near his own frontier, or in states already under his 
control, not only the army with which he intends to begin the 
‘invasion, but also that sustained gathering of fresh troops, and 
that vast accumulation of stores, arms, and munitions, which 
will suffice, as he hopes, to feed the war. The territory on 
which these resources are spread is called the ‘base of opera- 
‘tions.’ When the invading general has set out from this his 
strategic home to achieve the object he has in view, the neck 
of country by which he keeps up his communications with the 
base is called the ‘line of operations ;? and the maintenance 
of this line of operations is the one object which must never 
be absent from his mind. The farther he goes, the more he 
needs to keep up an incessant communication with his ‘ base ;’ 
and yet, since the line is lengthening as he advances, it is con- 
stantly becoming more and more liable to be cut. Such a dis- 
aster as that he looks upon as nearly equal to ruin, and there is 
hardly any thing that he will refuse to sacrifice for the defense 
of the dusty or mud-deep cart-roads, which give him his means 
of living and fighting. 

On the other hand, the commander of a ‘movable column’ 
begins his campaign by willfully placing himself in those very 


' I make this endeavor to elucidate the true character of the operation for 
the purpose of causing the reader to understand the kind of hazard which 
was involved in the march along the coast, and also in order to lay the 
ground for explaining (in a future volume) the causes which afterward 
brought upon the army cruel sufferings and privations. 

* This is generally, but not invariably, the same line as the one by which 
he has advanced. 


428 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLL 


circumstances which would bring ruin upon an army carrying 
on regular operations. He does not profess nor attempt to 
hold fast any ‘line of operations’ connecting him with his re- 
sources. He says to his enemy, ‘Surround me if you will; 
‘gather upon my front; hover round me on flank and rear. 
‘Do not affront me too closely, unless you want to see some: 
‘thing of my cavalry and my horse-artillery; but, keeping at 
‘a courteous distance, you may freely occupy the whole coun- 
‘try through which I pass. I care nothing for the roads by 
‘which Ihave come. What I need whilst my task is doing, I 
‘carry along with me, I have an enterprise in hand. That 
‘achieved, I shall march toward the resources which my coun- 
‘trymen have prepared for me. Those resources I will reach 
‘or else perish.’ If an army engaged in regular operations 
were likened to an engine drawing its supplies by means of 
long pipes from a river, the principle of the ‘movable column’ 
would be well enough tokened by that simple skinful of water 
which—carried on the back of a camel—ais the life of men pass- 
ing a desert. 

Each of the two systems has its advantages and its draw- 
backs. The advantages enjoyed by an army undertaking reg- 
ular operations are:—the lasting character of its power, and 
its comparative security against great disasters. The general 
conducting an army in regular operations is constantly replen- 
ishing his strength by drawing from his ‘ base’ fresh troops and 
supplies to compensate the havoc which time and the enemy— 
or even time alone—will always be working in his army; and 
if he meets with a check, he retires upon a line already occu- 
pied by portions of his force, already strewed with his maga- 
zines. He retires, in short, upon a road prepared for his recep- 
tion, and the farther he retreats, the nearer he is to his great 
resources. The drawbacks attending this system are the great 
quantity of means of land transport required for keeping up the 
communication, and the eternal necessity of having to be ready 
with a sufticient force to defend every mile of the ‘line of op- 
‘erations’ against the enterprises of the enemy. 

The advantages of the ‘movable column’ are:—that its means 
of land transport may be comparatively small—may in fact be 
proportioned to the limited duration of the service which it 
undertakes; and that, not. being clogged with the duty of 
maintaining a ‘line of operations,’ it has, in truth, nothing to 
defend except itself. But grave drawbacks limit the power 
of a ‘movable column.’ In the first place, it 1s an instrument 
fitted only for temporary use, because, during the service in 
which it is engaged, it has no resources to rely upon, except 


Cuap, XLI.? INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 429 


what it carries along with it. Another drawback is the hazard 
it incurs—not of mere defeat, but—of total extermination ; for 
it is a force which has left no dominion in its wake, and if it 
falls back, it falls into the midst of enemies having hold of the 
country around, and emboldened by seeing it retreat. 

Then, also, a movable column, even though it be never de- 
feated in any pitched battle, is liable to be brought to ruin by 
being well harassed; and very inferior troops, or even armed 
peasants, if they have spirit and enterprise, may put it in peril ; 
for, having the command of the country all round it, they can 
easily prepare their measures for vexing the column by day 
and by night. Again, the ‘movable column’ can not send its 
sick and wounded to the rear. It must either abandon the suf- 
ferers, or else find means of carrying them wherever it marches, 
and this, of course, is a task which is rendered more and more 
difficult by every succeeding combat. Again, if the ‘movable 
‘column’ is brought to frequent halts by the necessity of self- 
defense, there is danger that the operation in which it is en- 
gaged will last to a time beyond the narrow limit of the sup- 
plies which it is able to carry along with it. 

In Algeria the French had brought the system of using small 
‘movable columns’ to a high state of perfection ; and there one 
might see a force complete in all arms, carrying with it the 
bread and the cartridges, and driving betwixt its battalions 
the little herd of cattle, which would enable it to live and to 
fight; one might see it bidding farewell for perhaps several 
weeks to all its communications, and boldly venturing into the 
midst of a wilderness alive with angry foes; but the Arabs 
and Kabyles, though not without some of the warlike virtues, 
were, upon the whole, too unintelligent and too feeble to be 
able to put the system of the ‘movable column’ to a test suf- 
ficing to prove that the contrivance would hold good in Eu- 
rope. | 3 

i the whole, it may be acknowledged that, for operating 
in a country where the enemy is looked upon as at all formi- 
dable, the employment of a ‘movable column’ is a measure 
which will be likely to win more favor from those who love an 
adventure than from those who are acquainted with the art 
of war. 

But, whichever of the two methods be chosen, it is of great 
moment to choose decisively, taking care that the operations 
are carried on in a way consistent with the principle of the 
system on which they proceed. A general conducting regu- 
lar operations must be wary, circumspect, and resolutely pa- 
tient. The leader of a ‘movable column’ must be swift, and, 


430 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuae. XLI 


even for very safety’s sake, he may have to be venturesome, 
for what would be rashness in another may in him be rigid 
prudence. The two systems are so opposite, that to confuse 
the two, or to import into the practice of one of them the prac- 
tice applicable to the other, is to run into grave troubles and 
dangers. Yet this is what the Allies did. When the English 
Government committed to this enterprise a large proportion 
of their small, brilliant army, and appointed to the command 
of it a general mature in years and schooled by his long subor- 
dination to Wellington, they acted as though they meant that 
the army should engage with all due prudence in regular op- 
erations. When they ordered that this force should make a 
descent upon the Crimea without intending to prepare for it a 
base of operations at the landing-place, they caused it to act as 
a ‘movable column.’ It will be seen hereafter that from. this 
ambiguity of purpose, or rather from this dimness of sight, the 
events of the campaign took their shape. 

Again, it is right to see how far it be possible to change 
with the same force from one of the two systems to the other. 
Upon this, it can be said that an army engaged in regular op- 
erations may well enough be able to furnish forth a ‘movable 
‘column ;’ but to hope that a‘ movable column’ will be able to 
gather to itself all at once the lasting strength of an army pre- 
pared for regular operations is to hope for what can not be. 
It is true, as we shall see hereafter, that by dint of great effort 
and the full command of the sea, the two mighty nations of the 
West were able in time-to convert the remains of their ‘moy- 
‘able column’ into an army fitted for regular operations, but 
we shall have to remember that before the one system could 
be effectually replaced by the other, the soldiery underwent 
cruel sufferings. 

The 63,000 invaders now preparing to march toward the 
The Allies | South were the largest, and by far the best appoint- 
were to opeme ed force that the Powers of modern Europe had 
‘column.’ ever ‘dared to engage in what (as distinguishing it 
from regular operations) may rightly be called an adventure. 
Their plan was to advance toward the north of Sebastopol, 
suffering the enemy to close round their rear, and intending to 
march every day to a new point of contact with the fleet. It 
was only at the mouths of the rivers that the cliffs between 
Old Fort and Sebastopol left room for any thing like a land- 
ing-place; and (except so far as concerned the mere inter- 
change of signals) the land forces, whilst marching from the 
banks of one river to the banks of another, could not expect to 
be in communication with the fleets. Moreover, the Allied 


Cuap. XLI. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 431 


Generals were still in ignorance of the numerical strength of 
the enemy whom they were thus to defy. All they knew was 
that, so far as concerned his numbers of brave, steady, highly- 
drilled troops, the Czar was reported to be the foremost po- 
tentate of the world; and that the publicity of the Allied coun- 
sels had given him a good deal of time for re-enforcing the 
garrisons of the invaded province. 

It may be said that since the Allied armies were to be at- 
tended along the coast by their fleets, they were not in the 
strictest sense a ‘movable column.’ Each night, no doubt, 
they expected to be in communication with their ships, but, 
during each of the marches they were about to undertake, 
their dangers were to be in all respects the same as those 
which attend upon any other ‘movable column;’ for every 
morning they were to cast loose from the ties which connect- 
ed them with their resources, as well as with their means of 
retreat, and were to ground their hopes of recovering their 
communications upon their power. to force their way through 
a country held by the enemy. In short, the Allied armies 
were a‘ movable column ;’ but a movable column which could” 
hope to find means of succor, and, if necessary, of retreat, by 
fighting its way to a point of contact with the attendant fleets, 
and covering its withdrawal by a victory. There is the more 
need for showing this by dint of words, since it happened that 
the true nature of the expedition was obscured by the course 
of events. It passed for a measure more prudent than it real- 
ly was, because Prince Mentschikoff, being willful and unskill- 
ed, did not take the right means for exposing its rashness. 

The march now about to be undertaken by the invaders was 
Perilous char- Of such a kind that an enterprising enemy who un- 
acter of the derstood his calling might bring them to a halt 
Old Fort. whenever he chose; and, forcing them to try. to 
convert their flank into a front, might compel them to fight a 
battle with their back to the sea-cliff: to fight, in short, upon 
ground where defeat would be ruin. When, therefore, on the 
19th of September, 1854, the Allied armies broke up from their 
bivouaes and marched toward the south, they were engaging 
in a venturesome enterprise. 

It seems that, although by human contrivance a whole peo- 
ple may be shut out from the knowledge of momentous events 
in which its armies are taking a part, there is yet a subtle es- 
sence of truth which will permeate into the mind of a nation 
thus kept in ignorance. To a degree which freemen can hard- 
ly imagine to be possible, the first Napoleon had succeeded in 
hiding the achievements of the English army from the sight 


432 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIL 


of the French people; and since the French in after years 
were little tempted to gather up by aid of history the events 
which they had been hindered from learning in the form of 
‘news,’ there was—not merely in the French army, but even 
in all France—a very scant knowledge of the way in which the 
two mighty nations of the West had encountered one another 
in the great war. Yet, now that the time had come for test- 
ing the faith which one army had in the prowess of the other, 
it suddenly appeared that a belief in the quality of the English 
soldier was seated as deep in the mind of the French army as 
though it were a belief founded upon historical knowledge. 
This will be understood by observing the relative place which 
the French commander was content to take in the order of 
march, and by looking at it in connection with what then 
promised to be the character of the impending campaign. 

When once the invaders had landed and seized the coast- 
road, the one line of communication which the Russians could 
trust to for linking the garrison of Sebastopol to the main land 
was by the great road which passes through Bakshi Serai and 
‘Simpheropol. It was vital to the Russian commander to be 
able to hold this road, for by that his re-enforcements were to 
come. On the other hand, he had to try-to cover Sebastopol ; 
but such was the direction in which the Allies were preparing 
to march upon the place, that by manceuvring with his back 
toward the great road passing through Simpheropol he could 
cling to his line of communication, and yet be able to come 
down upon the flank of the invading armies whilst they were 
marching across his front. In this way he would cover Se- 
bastopol much more effectively than by risking his communi- 
cations in order to place his army like a mere inert block be- 
tween the invaders and their prey. Moreover he-was known 
The fate of the tO be relatively strong in cavalry, and the country 
whole Allied was of such a kind that the Allies advancing from 
bit eayety ~ Old Fort to the Belbec would have upon their left 
firmness of a fair undulating steppe such as horsemen exult to 
itwhichshould look upon. It was therefore to be expected that 
take the left. the whole stress of the task undertaken by the in- 
vaders would be thrown in the first instance upon that portion 
of the Allied force which might be chosen to form their left 
wing. 

In the armies of Kurope the right is the side of precedence, 
The French 2nd from the time that the Western Powers had 
take the right. beoun to.act together in Turkey, the French had 
always claimed, or rather had always taken, the right. Now 
it happened that both in Turkey and in the Crimea the side 


Cuar. XLI.] INVASION OF THE’ CRIMEA. 433 


of precedence was the side nearest to the sea, whilst the left 
was the side nearest to the enemy. Lord Raglan had observed 
all this, but he had observed in silence; and, finding the right 
always seized by our Allies, he had quietly put up with the 
left. Yet he was not without humor; and now, when he saw 
that in this hazardous movement along the coast the French 
were still taking the right, there was something like archness 
in his way of remarking that, although the French were bent 
upon taking precedence of him, their courtesy still gave him 
the post of danger. This he well might say, for, so far as con- 
cerned the duty of covering the venturesome march which was 
about to be undertaken, the whole stress of the enterprise was 
thrown upon the English army. The French force was cov- 
ered on its right flank by the sea, on its front and rear by the 
fire from the steamers, and on its teft by the English army. 
On the other hand, the English army, though covered on its 
right flank by the French, was exposed in front, and in rear, 
and on its whole left flank, to the full brunt of the enemy’s at- 
tacks. If the Russian General should act in any thing like 
conformity to the principles of the art of war, the whole weight 
of his attacks would have to be met in the first instance by the 
English alone; and, although the French would have an op- 
portunity of acting as a reserve, they would do so under cir- 
cumstances rendering it very difficult for them to retrieve any 
check sustained by their allies. In short, the French could not 
but know that, if the enemy should direct his enterprises 
against the left flank of the invaders, the least weakness on the 
. part of the English might enable him to roll up the whole Al- 
lied force, involving French and English alike in one common 
Their trustful. Gisaster. Yet, so steadfast was the trust which the 
ness and good French reposed in the English, so unshaken the 
oped courage and good sense with which they commit- 
ted themselves to the prowess of their ancient foe, that they 
never for an instant sought to meddle with the duty*of cover- 
ing the march from an attack on the left flank. They planned 
that the English should be there. 

On the morning of the 19th of September the Allied armies 
The advance began their advance toward the south. On the 
begun. right and nearest the sea the French army marched 
in a formation adopted by Marshal Bugeaud at the battle of 
Isly. The outline of the ground covered by their troops took 
the shape of a lozenge—a lozenge whereof the foremost apex 
The order of | Was formed by the Ist Division, the angles on either 
ere flank by the 2nd and 8rd, and the rearmost point 

by the 4th Division. Within the mascle or hollow lozenge 

Vou. L—T 


434 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLI. 


thus formed, there marched the Turkish battalions and those 
portions of the artillery and the convoy which were not spe- 
cially attached to one or other of the divisions. Each French 
division! marched in two columns, consisting each of one brig- 
ade, and the artillery and incumbrances belonging to each di- 
vision marched between the two brigades. Each brigade was 
in regimental column at sectional distance. ‘The Allied fleets, 
slowly gliding along the coast, covered the French army on its 
right flank, and carefully reconnoitred every seam and hollow 
of the ground. in front which could be reached by the eyes of 
men looking from the ships. 

Since the English army was to advance in a way which left 
it open to the enemy in front, in rear, and on its left flank, 
Lord Raglan, of course, deemed it likely that he would be at~ 
tacked in his march; and*that upon smooth, open ground, his 
army would be called upon to defend both itself and its trail- 
ing convoy against the assaults of an enemy who was strong 
in the cavalry arm. But this task was rendered less hard than 
it would otherwise be by the quality of the English soldier, 
and the peculiar order of battle in which he loves to fight. 
He fights in line; and therefore, with his moderate force of in. 
fantry and artillery, Lord Raglan was able to resolve that, 
from whatever quarter the onset might come, he would be 
ready to meet it with a front of bayonets and field artillery ex- 
tending along nearly two miles of ground. 

In order to be able at a few minutes’ notice to show a front 
of this extent either toward the south, the east, or the north, 
Lord Raglan kept each of his infantry divisions massed in close 
column, and he disposed his Ist, 2nd, 3rd, and light divisions 
in such a way that the whole body had both a front and a 
depth of two divisions. A body which moves in columns of 
this kind is said to be marching’‘in grand divisions. The 
distances between the divisions were so arranged that, with- 
out disloéation, they could form line either in front or toward 
the flank. The artillery attached to each division marched on 
the right or seaward flank of the force to which it belonged. 


1 It was intended..and ordered that the 1st. and 4th French Divisions 
should affect a lozenge formation analogous to that which characterized the 
general order of march, but the direction was not practically attended to.. 
No one knows better than an African General the art of enfolding the help- 
less portions of a column in battalions of infantry; but the French force be- 
ing covered on all sides in the way already described, no elaborate precau- 
tions were needed. 

* There are four or five different terms which have been used by experi- 
enced Generals in-describing this disposition of troops, but the authority on 
which I place the most reliance sanctions the term ‘used in the text. 


Cuap. XLI.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 435 


~ The advance guard consisted of the 11th Hussars and the 
13th Light Dragoons, under Lord Cardigan. In rear of the 
small infantry advanced guard, which followed the horsemen, 
there marehed a detachment of the Rifles, in extended order. 
Then, on the right, came the 2nd: Division, and, on the left, the 
Light Division: the 3rd Division marched in rear of the 2nd, 
and the Light Division was followed by the 1st Division: Of 
the 4th Division, the 63rd Regiment and two companies of the 
46th had been’ left (with: a squadr on of the 4th Light Dra- 
goons) to clear the beach at Kamishlu;- but the remainder of 
the division, under Sir George Cathcart, marched in rear of the 
ist Division. Along the left flank of the adv ancing columns, 
and at a distance from'them of some 200 yards, were riflemen 
in skirmishing order, and a line of skirmishers ‘from the same 
force closed the rear of the infantry. On the left flank, and 
nearly in the same alignment as the leading infantry divisions, 
was the 8th Hussars, and on the ‘same flank, but in an align- 
ment less advanced than the rearmost of the infantry columns, 
there was the 17th Lancers. The cattle and ‘the baggage 
marched in rear of the 3rd Division, and so as to be covered, 
toward the left, by the 4th Division. Then followed the rear 
guard, and then’a line of Rifles disposed at intervals in extend- 
ed order.» Last ofall came the 4th Light Dragoons, under 
—_ George Paget. 

‘Thus marched the: str aavige of the Western Powers. The 
‘sun shone hotly as on a summer’s day in England ; 
but breezes, springing fresh from the’ sea, floated 
briskly along the hills. Th he ground: was an undulating: steppe, 
alluring to cavalry. It was rankly covered with a herb like 
southernwood ; and when thestems were crushed under foot 
by the advancing ‘columns, the whole air became laden: with 
bitter fragrance. ‘The aroma was new to some. ‘To men of 
the western counties of England’it was so familiar that it car- 
ried them back to childhood: andthe village church 5 they re- 
membered the nosegay of ‘ boy’s-love”’ that used to be’ set by 
the Prayer-Book of the Sunday maiden too demure for the 
vanity of flowers. : 

“In each of the cleo massed Golentin, whieh were foinded ny 
our four’ complete divisions, there were more! than 5000 foot 
soldiers. The colors ‘were flying; the: bands; at: first;*were 
playing; and once more'the time “had come round whenin all 
this armed pride there: was nothing ‘of false ‘majesty; for al- 
ready videttes could be seen on the hillocks,; and (except at 
the spots where our horsemen were mar ching): there was noth- 
ing’ but air ‘and sunshine; ‘and, at intervals; the dark form’ ofa 


The face 


436 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLI. 


single riflemen, to divide our columns from the enemy. But 
more warlike than trumpet and drum was the grave quiet 
which followed the ceasing of the bands. The pain of weari- 
ness had begun. Few spoke. All toiled. Waves break upon 
the shore; and though. they are many, still distance will gath- 
er their numberless cadences into one. So, also, it was with 
one ceaseless, hissing sound that a wilderness of tall, crisping 
herbage bent under the tramp of the coming thousands. As 
each mighty column marched on, one hardly remembered, at 
first, the weary frames, the aching limbs which composed it ; 
for—instinct with its own proper soul and purpose, absorbing 
the volitions of thousands of men, and bearing no likeness to 
the mere sum of the human beings out of whom it was made 
—the column itself was the living thing—the slow, monstrous 
unit of strength which walks the modern earth where empire 
is brought into question. But alittle while, and then the sick- 
ness which had clung to the army began to make it seen that 
the columns, in all their pride, were things built with the bod- 
ies of suffering mortals. , . 

We saw that, before the embarkation, our troops had fallen 
Sickness and Into a weak state of health, and that, even of those 
a ear he who were free from serious illness, there were hard- 
soldiers, ly any who had been able to keep their accustomed 
strength. It had been hoped that the voyage would bring 
back health and strength; but the hope proved vain; and 
Lord Raglan, knowing the weakly state of the men, had or- 
dered that they should be allowed to enfold the few things 
they most needed in their blankets, and to land and march 
without their knapsacks. Yet now, before the first hour of 
march was over, the men began to fall out from their ranks. 
Some of these were in the agonies of cholera. Their faces had 
a dark, choked look; they threw themselves on the ground 
and writhed, but often without speaking and without a ery. 
Many more dropped out from mere weakness. These the of- 
ficers tried to inspirit, and sometimes they succeeded ; but 
more often the sufferer was left upon the ground. It was 
vain to tell him, though so it was believed at the time, that he 
would fall into the hands of the Cossacks. The tall, stately 
men of the Guards dropped from their ranks in great numbers. 
It was believed at the time that the men who fell out would 
be taken by the enemy; but the number of stragglers at length 
became very great, and, in the evening, a force was sent back 
to bring them in. 

During the march the foot soldiers of the Allied armies suf- 
fered thirst; but early in the afternoon the troops in advance 


Crap. XLII. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 437 


The stream of Teached the long-desired stream of the Bulganak, 
the Bulganak. and, as soon as a division came in sight of the water, 
the men broke from their ranks, and ran forward that they 
might plunge their lips deep in the cool, turbid, grateful stream. 
In one brigade a stronger governance was maintained. Sir 
Colin Campbell would not allow that even the rage of thirst 
should loosen the discipline of his grand Highland regiments ; 
he halted them a little before they reached the stream, and so 
ordered it that, by being saved from the confusion that would 
have been wrought by their own wild haste, they gained in 
comfort, and knew that they were gainers. When men toil in 
organized masses, they owe what well-being they have to wise 
and firm commanders. 

It was on the banks of this stream of the Bulganak that the 
Allied armies were to bivouac for the night. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


Earty in the afternoon, Lord Raglan, riding in advance of 
The affair of the infantry divisions, had reached the banks of the 
the Bulganak yjver, and, observing a group of Cossacks on the 
brow of the hill toward the south, he ordered the squadrons 
which Lord Cardigan had with him! to move forward and re- 
connoitre the ground. Lord Lucan was present with this por- 
tion of his cavalry force. 

Where the post-road from Eupatoria to Sebastopol crosses 
the Bulganak, the ground on the south side of the river rises 
gradually for some hundreds of yards from the banks of the 
stream, then dips a little, then rises again, then dips rather 
deeply, and then again rises up to the: summit of' the ridge 
which bounds the view of an observer in the valley of the Bul- 
ganak. 

Our Pabititring squadrons went forward a great way 
into the lower dip, and when they were there it was s perceived 
that, confronting them from the hill above, there was'a body 
of cavalry 2000 strong. Our four squadrons halted and formed 
line. The Russian cavalry came forward a little, then halted, 
and, throwing out skirmishers, attempted some long, fruitless 
shots with their carbines. Our squadrons also threw out skir- 
mishers. 

But Lord Raglan, who had remained with his staff on the 


- !} Thellth Hussars and 13th Light Dragoons, 


438 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, — [Cuar. XLII 


northern side of the hollow, had now discerned the formidable 
body of cavalry which was confronting our four squadrons; and 
Airey, being gifted with a keen, far-reaching sight, was able to 
make out that the glitter which ‘could be.seen between the sec- 
ond crest and the summit was: the play of the sun upon the 
points of bayonets, and that in the upper hollow there were 
several battalions: It was soon made plain that within a few 
hundred yards of our four squadrons the enemy was. present 
with all three arms, and in some force. . He had there, as. we 
now know, about 6000 men of his 17th Division, two batteries. 
of ar tillery, a brigade of regular cavalry, and. nine sotnias of, 
Cossacks. 

Lord Raglan, af army was ‘still on its march, saw that. 
he must take care to avoid: provoking an action ; but also he 
had to provide for the retreat of the four squadrons, which 
stood rooted in the centre of the lower hollow, so near to an 
overwhelming enemy’s force of all arms, and so far from their 
supports, that they were m-some*danger.~The problem was 
to extricate them, if possible, without getting into that sort of 
conflict which would be likely to- bring about a serious engage- 
ment. Lord Raglan saw that what made the Russians hesitate 
was the steadiness, and the exact, ceremonious formation of the 
little cavalry force of four squadrons which tranquilly confront- 
ed them; and that, if he were to withdraw it before he had 
made arrangements for ‘covering its retreat, it would be pur- 
sued and roughly handled by overwhelming numbers. . He was 
anxious ; ‘for, small as*was: this little body of horse, it was’a 
large proportion of his whole strength in the cavalry arm; but 
he saw that its safety would be best provided for by bringing 
up troops. to its support, and allowing it in the mean time to 
remain where it was, confusing the enemy by its obstinate 
presence and its car eful'ar ray. He ordered up in all haste the 
Light and the 2nd Divisions, the 8th Hussars, and 17th Lancers, 
and afterward the nine- pounder batteries attached to the Light 
Division. When our infantry divisions came up, they were 
formed in line, and the cavalry supports took a position in left 
rear of the advanced squadrons. All these operations the en- 
emy suffered to take place without resistance; and when they 
were completed his opportunity was gone. 

So, all being now in readiness, Lord Raglan wished that. the 
four squadrons should forthwith retire; and the more so as 
he was apprehensive lest these horsemen, in their evident 
longing for a combat, should be tempted to charge the body 
of cavalry in their immediate front. Still, he was unwilling to 
embarrass Lord Lucan (close as he then was to the enemy) by 


Cuarv. XLII] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ; 439. 


an order too precise or imperative. In these circumstances, 
Airey galloped forward to give effect to Lord Raglan’s wishes. 

When Airey came up, he found that by communicating Lord 
Raglan’s. wishes without delivering a positive order he was 
supplying materials for a debate between Lord Lucan and his 
brigadier. Yet for a wordy debate the time and the place 
were ill fitted, for the four squadrons, as we have seen, were 
within but a little distance of overwhelming forces.. There is 
some little obscurity as to the exact way in which Airey 
brought his will to bear; but he saw what was wanted, and 
he said the force must retire immediately, and by alternate 
squadrons. Though he spoke in terms which might have 
meant that he was only giving his own opinion, yet perhaps 
the decisiveness of his speech and manner led to the impres- 
sion that he was delivering Lord Raglan’s orders. Be this as 
it may, the result was quickly attained... Lord Lucan under- 
stood that he was to go forthwith to Lord Raglan. Lord 
Cardigan understood that the force was to retire immediately, 
and by alternate lines.. The operation instantly commenced, 
and was conducted with excellent precision, for during the 
whole retreat there were always two squadrons out of the 
four which were showing a smooth front to the enemy. 

The moment the withdrawal. of our little cavalry force be- 
gan, the enemy’s artillery teams, unseen before, came bound- 
ing up from the hollow, and his guns, being quickly unlimber- 
ed, were soon in battery upon the ridge. With these he open- 
ed fire upon our retreating squadrons; but he saw that these 
horsemen, no longer isolated, were retiring upon ample sup- 
ports of all arms. He did not, therefore, venture to pursue 
with his cavalry... Two men in our cavalry force were wound- 
ed, and four or five horses killed. The six-pounder guns. at- 
tached to our cavalry replied to the enemy’s artillery without 
good effect; but when our nine-pounder guns were brought. 
into action, they caused the enemy’s artillery to limber up and 
retire.. They also, it seems, inflicted some loss upon the ene- 
my’s cavalry, for it was said that as many as thirty-five of his 
troopers were killed or wounded. The Russians were soon 
out of sight. Fi: 

The slight combat thus occurring on the Bulganak was the 
first approach to a passage of arms between Russia and the 
Western Powers. The pith of what had happened was this: 
The Russians had been making a reconnaissance in force at a 
time when Lord Raglan was making a reconnaissance with 
only four squadrons; and, as the nature of the ground con- 
cealed the enemy’s strength, our lesser foree was exposed for 


440 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuar. XLII, 


some minutes to a good deal of danger; but the enemy, being 
slow to take advantage of fortune, had given the English Gen- 
eral full time to extricate his squadrons by the use of the three 
arms. Lord Raglan was so well pleased with the success of 
this last operation, and with the steadiness shown by our cay- 
alry, that even on the night of the Alma (when it might have 
been supposed that the impressions produced by the battle 
would have superseded the recollection of the previous day) 
he spoke with complacency of this affair on the Bulganak. 


CHAPTER XLII. 


Wuen this affair was concluded, Lord Raglan biega to pre- 
Apparently pare for a contingency of graver import. The ene- 
dangerous i my, as it now appeared, had a force of all arms in 
English army. the immediate neighborhood, and it was known 
that he had his whole field army within a few hours’ march 
of the Bulganak. On the other hand, Lord Raglan was ex- 
posed to attack in front, left flank, and rear; and even on his 
right flank he was without immediate suppor t, for the course 
of the day’s march had thrown an interval of a mile between 
the French and the English armies. It was to be apprehend- 
ed that the enemy, issuing during the night from his intrench- 
ed position on the Alma, would place himself in such a position 
as to be able to fall upon our army in front and flank at dawn 
Lord Raglan Of day. Lord Raglan, therefore, determined that 
causes it to bi; the troops should bivouac in order of battle, and so 
of battle. as to be rapidly able to show a deployed front to 
the enemy either in front or flank. He placed the troops him- 
self, fixing their exact position with minute care. 

The first brigades of the 2nd and Light Divisions were 
drawn up in line parallel with the river, and some hundreds 
of yards in advance of it. The first brigades of the Ist and 
3rd Divisions were placed in an oblique line, receding from 
the left. of the Light Division, and going back to the river’s 
bank. The troops, thus deployed, formed with the river a kind 
of three-sided inclosure, in which the principal part of the cay- 
alry and the incumbrances of the army were infolded. ‘The sec- 
ond brigade of each of the divisions already-named was form- 
ed in column in rear of the first or deployed brigade. The 
4th Division and the 4th Light dragoons were placed in ob- 
servation on the northern side of the river. Finally, Colonel 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 441 


Lagondie, one of the French Commissioners at our head-quar- 
ters, was requested to suggest to Prince Napoleon the expedi- 
ency of his drawing his division somewhat more near to the 
English right.} 

Our troops piled arms, and bivouacked in order of battle.? 
There was a post-house at the point where the road crossed 
the river, and there Lord Raglan passed the night. 

The situation of our army seemed to be critical; but when 
morning dawned it appeared that the enemy, attempting noth- 
ing, had drawn off to his intrenched position on the Alma. 

So the peril which the Allies had been encountering for the 
last twenty-four hours was now at an end; and the duty of 
carrying the position on the Alma might be regarded as easy, 
in comparison with that which would have devolved upon the 
invaders if our left flank had been briskly attacked on their 
march. It is common to attribute great results to careful de- 
sign; but the truth is that the Allies owed their prosperous 
landing and their tranquil march to the forbearance of tho 
Russian commander. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 


a 

For an army undertaking to withstand the march of invad- 
Position onthe E'S Who come along the shore from the north, the 
a position on the left bank of the Alma is happily 
formed by nature, and is capable of being made strong. The 
river springs from the mountain range in the southeast of the 
peninsula, and its tortuous channel, resulting at last in a west- 
erly course, brings it down to the sea near the headland called 
Cape Loukool. In that region the right or northern bank of 
the stream inclines with a very gentle slope to the water’s 
edge; but on the south or left bank the river presses close 
against a great range of hills, and the rocky ground which 
forms their base, being scarped by the action of the river in its 
swollen state, gives a measure of the loud, red torrent thrown 
down in flood-times from the sides of the Tchatir Dagh. Yet, 
so long as it flows in its summer bed, the pure gray stream of 
the Alma, though strong and rapid even then, can be crossed 


' Colonel Lagondie fulfilled his mission; but on his return, being a near- 
sighted man, he rode into the midst of a Cossack picket, and was taken pris- 
ener. ~~ we ; i 2 See the plan on p. 442. 


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English army when it bivouacked in 
order of battle on the Bulganak, and 
showing also how it wheeled into the 
line of march on the morning of the 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 448 


in most places by a full-grown man without losing foot. There 
are, however, some deeps. which would force a man to swim a 
few strokes ;-and, on the other hand, the river is passed in sey- 
eral places by easy and frequented fords. Near the village of 
Bourliouk, at the time of the action, there was a good timber 
bridge. 

Along the course of the stream, on the north or right. bank, 

there is a broad. belt of gardens and vineyards, inclosed by low 
stone walls, and reaching down to the water; but on the left 
or south side there are few inclosures, for, in most places, the 
rock formation, which marks the left bank of the river, has its 
base so close down to the water’s edge as to leave but little 
soil deep enough for culture. 
» The smooth slopes by which the invader from the north ap- 
proaches the Alma are contrasted by the aspect of the country 
on the opposite bank of the river; for there the field is so bro- 
ken up into hills and valleys—into steep acclivities and narrow 
ravines—into jutting knolls and winding gullies—that, with the 
labor of a Russian army, and the resources. of Sebastopol at his 
command, a skilled engineer would have found it hard to ex- 
haust his contrivances for the defense of a ground having all 
this strength of feature. 

It is the high land nearest to the shore which falls most ab- 
ruptly ; for when a man turns his back to the sea, and rides up 
along the river’s bank, the summits of the hills on his right re- 
cede from him more and more—recede so far that, although 
they are higher than the hills near the shore, they are connect- 
ed with the banks of the stream by slopes more gently inclin- 
ing. 

The main features of the ground are these: first and nearest 
to the sea-shore there. is what may be called the ‘ West Cliff,’ 
for the ground there rises to a height of some 350 feet; and 
not only presents, looking west, a bluff buttress of rock to the 
sea, but also on its northern side hangs over the river so steep 
that a man going up along the bank of the stream has at first 
an almost sheer precipice on his right hand; and it is only 
when he all but reaches the village of Almatamack that he 
finds the cliff losing its severity. At that point the ground 
becomes so sloping and so broken as to be no longer difficult 
of ascent for a man on foot, nor even for country wagons. In 
rear—Russian rear—of the cliff there are the villages of Hadji- 
Boulat, Ulukul Tiouets, and Ulukul Akles. 

Higher up the river, but joined on to the West Cliff, there is 
a height, which was crowned at the time of the war by an un- 
finished turret intended for a telegraph. This is the Tele- 


444 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


graph Height. At top, the West Cliff and the Telegraph 
Height form one connected plateau or table-land; but the 
sides of the Telegraph Height have not the abrupt character 
which marks the West Cliff. They are steep, but both toward 
the river and toward the east they are much broken up into 
knolls, ridges, hollows, and gullies. At all points they can be 
ascended by a man on foot, and at some by wagons. These 
steep sides of the Telegraph Height are divided from the river 
by a low and almost flat ledge, with a varying breadth of from 
two to six hundred yards. The ledge was a good deal wood- 
ed at the time of the war, and on some parts of it there were 
vineyards or orchards. 

To the east of the Telegraph Height the trending away of 
the hills leaves a hollow or recess, so formed and so placed 
that its surface might be likened to a huge vine-leaf; a vine- 
leaf placed on a gentle incline, with its lower edge on the riv- 
er, its stem at the bridge, and its main fibre following the 
course of the great road which bends up over the hill toward 
Sebastopol. This opening in the hills is the main Pass; and 
through it (as might be gathered from what has just been said), 
the Causeway or great post-road goes up from the bridge.} 
Across the mouth of the Pass, at a distance of a few yards 
from the bridge, there are small natural mounds or risings of 
ground, having their tops at a height of about sixty feet above 
the level of the river. These are so ranged as to form, one 
with the other, a low and uneven but almost continuous em- 
bankment, running from east to west, and parallel with the 
river. The natural rampart thus formed controls the entrance 
to the Pass from the north, for it not only overlooks the bridge, 
but also commands the ground far and wide on both sides of 
the river, and on both sides of the great road. Behind, the 
ground falls and then rises again, till 1t mingles with the slopes 
and the many knolls and hillocks which connect it with the re- 
ceding flanks of the Telegraph Height on the one side, and the 
Kourgané Hill-on the other. 

Still higher up the river, but receding from it in a south- 
easterly direction, the ground rises gradually to a commanding 
height, and terminates in a peak. This hill is the key of the 
position. It is called the Kourgané Hill. Around its slopes, 
at a distance of about 300 yards from the river, the ground so 
‘swells out as to form a strong rib—a rib which bends round 


1 In speaking of this opening as a ‘ Pass,’ I have followed the example of 
one whom I regard as a great master of the diction applicable to military 
subjects ; and it is not, of course, meant that there is any thing at all Alpine 
in the character of this range of low hills—hills less than 400 feet high. 


Plan indicating, in a general way, the form of the opening called ‘+ The Pass,” through 
which the Post-road, after crossing the Alma, bends up over the hills. 


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446 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


the front and the flanks of the bastion there built by nature, 
giving a command toward the southwest, the west, the north- 
west, and the northeast. ‘Toward the west this terrace, if so 
it may be called, is all but joined to those mounds which we 
spoke of as barring the mouth of the Pass. Behind all these 
natural ramparts there are hollows and dips in the ground, 
which give ample means for concealing and sheltering troops; 
but from the jutting rib down to the bank of the river the 
slope is gentle and smooth like the glacis. of a fortress. It was 
on this Kourgané Hill that Prmce Mentschikoff established his 
head-quarters. 

The immediate approach to the river from its right bank is 
every where gentle, but the ground on its south side is a good 
deal scarped by the action of the water; and all along that 
part of the river which flows opposite to the Kourgané Hill 
and the main Pass, the left bank rises almost vertically from 
the water’s edge to a height of from eight to fifteen feet. 

On the north bank of the river, and at a distance of about a 
mile from its mouth, there is the village of Almatamack. On 
the same bank, but more than a mile and a quarter higher up 
the stream, there stood at the time of the war a large white 
homestead. Yet a mile higher up the river, on the same bank, 
and nearly facing the mouth of the Pass, there stands the large 
straggling village of Bourliouk. The cottages and farm-build- 
ings which skirt this village on its eastern side extend far up 
the river. From Bourliouk to the easternmost part of the po- 
sition the distance is two miles. 

To ascend the position from the north there are several fre- 
quented ways: 

1. Close to the sea and to the mouth of the river there is a 
singular fissure in the rock, and through this a narrow way 
leads round, and up to the top of the cliff. This road was not 
traversed by artillery on the day of the battle, but it is be- 
lieved that this was because the guns could not be brought 
across the river at the point where it flows into the sea. 

2. From the ford at the village of Almatamack there is a 
wagon-road which leads up to the top of the plateau. It was 
practicable for artillery. 

3. From the white homestead there is a road which crosses 
the river and goes up to the plateau; but, either because of 
the badness of the ford, or else the too rugged ascent beyond 
it, this road could not be used for artillery. The want of a 
road for their guns in this part of the field was the main cause 
which hampered the French army. 

4, On the western side of the village of Bourliouk there is a 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, 4447 


frequented ford across the river, and from that spot two wag- 
on-roads forking off at no great distance from one another lead 
up to. the Telegraph and the villages in its rear.. The western- 
most of these roads was found to be practicable for artillery. 

5. Opposite to Bourliouk two almost parallel, wagon-roads 
lead up from the bank of the river.to the top of the plateau. 

6. The Great Causeway, or post-road leading from Eupato- 
ria, goes through the eastern skirts of Bourliouk, crosses the 
bridge, enters the Pass, and ascends by a gentle incline to- 
ward the low chain of mounds running across its mouth. Aft- 
er piercing that natural rampart, it bends into the southerly 
course which leads it. to Sebastopol. 

7. To the east of the main Pass there are other roads; but 
they. are not farther spoken of here, because all the hill-side in 
that part of the field is more or less accessible to artillery. 

Except at the West Cliff, every part of the position can be 
reached by men on foot. 

In the rear—Russian rear—of the hills which form this po- 
sition, the ground falls, and it rises again at a distance of two 
miles. 

Down to the edge of the vineyards, the whole of the field 
on the north or right bank of the river is ground tempting to 
cavalry; and although the south side of the stream is marked, 
as we saw, by stronger features, still the summits of the heights 
spread out broad, like the English “Downs.” Except the sheer 
sides of the cliff, and the steeps of the Telegraph Height, there 
is little on the higher ground to obstruct the manceuyres of 
horsemen. 

From the sea-shore to the easternmost spot occupied by Rus- 
sian troops, the distance for a man going straight was nearly 
five miles and a half; but if he were to go all the way on the 
Russian bank of the river, he would have to pass over more 
ground; for the Alma here makes a strong bend, and leaves 
open the chord of the arc to invaders who come from the 
north,} 


‘Tam aware that in distances and in other material points this descrip 
tion of the position differs widely from the result of the hasty surveys which 
were made soon after the battle by English officers. The French Govern- 
ment plans bear such strong marks of having been made with great care and 
labor, that in general I have ventured to take them for my guide in prefer- 
ence to those of my own countrymen. 


448 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV; 


II. 


Against any plan for occupying the whole of this range of 
hills by the forces of the Czar there were two cogent reasons : 
one was, that the summits of the West Cliff, and even of part 
of the Telegraph Height, were exposed to fire from the ships; 
the other, that the position was too wide for the numbers 
which were brought to defend it. 

But the whole of the naval and military resources of the 
Mentschikoff’s Crimea had been intrusted to the direction of Prince 
Pe himattot Mentschikoff. With him it rested to make head 
the position. against the invasion; and it seems he had been so 
forcibly struck with the great apparent steepness of the West 
Cliff and the heights connected with it, that he thought it must 
be wholly inaccessible to troops. He conceived, therefore, that 
he might safely omit to occupy it, and might be content to take 
up a narrowed position, beginning on the eastern slopes of the 
Kourgané Hill, and terminating on the west of the Telegraph 
Height, at a distance of more than two miles from the sea.! 
By this course, as he thought, he would elude both of the ob- 
stacles which interfered with his hold of the position; for his 
extreme left would be comparatively distant from the ship- 
ping, and the whole ground occupied would be so far contract- 
ed that the troops which he had at his command might suffice 
to hold it. Upon this plan he acted. So, although the posi- 
tion of the Alma, as formed by nature, had an extent of more 
than five miles, the troops which stood charged to hold it had 
a front of only one league. Prince Mentschikoff rested upon 
the assumption that the whole of the ground which he pro- 
posed to leave unoccupied was inaccessible to troops; but if 
he had walked his horse into the road which was within half a 
mile of his extreme left, he would have found that it led down 
to a ford opposite to the village of Almatamack, and was per- 
fectly practicable for artillery. His army had been on the 
ground for several days, yet, with a strange carelessness, he not 
only omitted to break up or to guard this road from Alma- 
tamack, but made all his dispositions exactly as though no such 
road existed. . . 

The forces brought forward to defend this position for the - 
His forces, © 22" Were 3400 cavalry, 33,000 infantry, and -2600 
artillerymen, making altogether 39,000 men,? with 


106 guns. 


’ The Russian accounts estimate the distance at only two versts, but I ad. 
here, as before stated, to the French plans. 
_*. 39,017. See post, p. 450 et sey., where the details of the force are fully 
given. 


Cuar.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 449 


Prince Mentschikoff commanded in person. He was a way- 
His personal Ward, presumptuous man, and his bearing toward 
yeas. the generals under his command was of such a kind 
that he did not or could not strengthen himself by the coun- 
sels of men abler than himself.1 In times past he had been 
mutilated by a round shot from a Turkish gun. He bore ha- 
tred against the Ottoman race; he bore hatred against their 
faith. He had opened his mission at the Porte with insult ; 
he had closed it with threats. And now—a sequence rare in 
the lives of modern statesmen—he was out on a hill-side, with 
horse and foot, having warrant—full warrant this time, to ad- 
duce ‘ the last reason of kings.’ 

So far as regards the general scheme of the campaign, his 
His planof Conception, it seems, was this: he would suffer the 
campaign. Allies to land without molestation, because he de- 
sired that the defeat which he was preparing for them should 
be, not a mere repulse, but a crushing and signal disaster. He 
would not attack them on their line of march, because he liked 
better to husband his strength for the great position on the 
Alma. It seemed to him that there he could hold his ground 
against the invaders for three weeks, and his imagination was 
that, baffled for many days by the strength of his position, 
drawing their supplies from the ships with pain and uncertain- 
ty, and encumbered more and more every day with wounded 
men, the Allies would fall into evil days. In the mean time the 
troops, long since dispatched from Bessarabia, would begin to 
reach him by way of Perekop and Simpheropol; and, thus re- 
enforced, he would in due season take the offensive, inflicting 
upon the Western Powers a chastisement commensurate with 
their rashness. 

Prince Mentschikoff rested this structure of hope upon the 
His relianceon assumption that he could hold the position on the 
‘irenath tthe Alma for at the least many days together, and 
position. against repeated assaults. Yet he took little pains 
to prepare the ground for a great defense.? On the jutting 
rib which goes round the front of the Kourgané Hill, at a dis- 
tance of about 300 yards from the river, he threw up a breast- 
work, a work of a very slight kind, presenting no physical ob- 
stacle to the advance of troops, but sufficiently extended to be 

? I infer this from the fact that, the day before the action, General Kiria- 
koff, an officer of high reputation, was attempting indirect methods of calling 
Prince Mentschikoff’s attention to the defectiveness of his arrangements.— 
Kiriakoff’s Statement. 

2 I say this in the teeth of the English dispatches, and, I fear, of many 
written and oral statements from officers; but I am sure that every engineer 
who saw the ground will support my assertion. 


450 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuap. XLIV. 


capable of receiving the fourteen heavy guns. with which he 
The meanshe armed it.'. This work was. called the ‘Great Re- 


sfetitnénine ‘doubt.’?.. Prince Mentschikoff was delighted. with 
it. this earthwork. ‘Is not this a grand: thing?’ said 


he to General Kiriakoff the day before the action; ‘see, it will 
do mischief both ways.’ And he then pointed out how, whilst 
the face of the redoubt commanded the smooth slope beneath 
it, the guns at the shoulder of the work would throw their sie 
across the great.road on either side. of the bridge... 

On the same hill, but higher up and more to his right, the 
Prince threw up another slight breastwork, which he armed 
with a battery of field-guns. This was the Lesser Redoubt. 

The vineyards at some points were marked. and cléared.so 
as to give full effect to the action of the artillery ; but, except 
the two-redoubts, no field-works were constructed by the Rus- 
sian General. Willful and confident, he was content, to” rest 
mainly upon the natural strength of the ground, the valor of 
his troops, and the faith that he had in his own prowess as a 
commander. He even omitted, as we have seen, to break up 
or to guard the wagon-road which led up from Almatamack 
to the left of his position. The Prince did not. attempt to oc- 
cupy the West Cliff; but some days before the action a bat- 
talion? and half a battery had. been placed overlooking the sea 
in the village of Ulukul Akles, in order, as was said, to ‘ catch 
‘marauders,’ or to prevent a descent from the sea in the rear 
of the Russian army; and the detachment. remained in that 
part of the field until the time when the battle began. 

On the ledge which divided the river from the steep, broken 
Disposition of Side of the Telegraph Height, Prince Mentschikoff 
his troops. = placed four Militia’ battalions, and supported them 
by three battalions of regular infantry,® placed only a hundred 


'‘ Twelve only, according to Prince Gortschakoff. The pieces were 32- 
pounders and 24-pound howitzers. 

* The work was formed by cutting a shallow trench, and throwing up the 
earth in front of it. I follow the military authorities in calling these works 
“‘redoubts,” because our people at home came to know of them under this 
description ; but the term is not accurate, for they were open toward the rear. 

3 The No. 2 battalion of Minsk. 

* I adopt this inaccurate term as the best I can find to describe these semi- 
regular troops, because to call them, as the Russians do, ‘ reserve battalions,’ 
would tend to confuse, by suggesting the idea of ‘reserves’ in the ordinary 
sense. I thought at one time I might have called them ‘depot battalions,’ 
but upon the whole it seemed to me that the term ‘ militia’ would be less likely 
to convey a wrong notion than the term ‘depot.’ ‘They are troops regarded 
as very inferior in quality to troops of the line. The four battalions which I 
call ‘militia’ were the ‘reserve’ battalions of the 13th Division.—Anitchkoff, 
Chodasiewicz. ° Nos. 2,3, and 4 of the Taroutine corps.—Jdid. 


Guar. XLIV.} INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: 451 


and fifty yards in their rear, and by a fourth battalion! drawn 
up in a neighboring rayine.?, Farther still im rear, he held in 
hand as a reserve for his left wing the four battalions of the 
‘ Moseow corps,’ which had joined him that morning.? These, 
Forces origin. With two batteries of artillery,* were all the forces 
ally posted in Occupying that part of the position which was about 
raaitien ev '® to be assailed by the French.’ Including the bat- 
sailed by the talion and the half battery at Ulukul Akles, they 
rench, : : ; é . 

consisted of thirteen battalions of infantry with 
twenty guns, and numbered altogether rather more than 10,000 
men.® They formed the left wing of the Russian army, and 
_were commanded by General Kiriakoff. The battalions were 
placed at intervals, checker-wise, and each battalion was massed 
in column of companies. A line of skirmishers was thrown out 
in front, but for want, as was said, of better ground to act upon, 
these skirmishers were kept within ten yards of the ‘ Militia’ 
battalions. The two batteries of artillery were not at first so 
placed as to be of any usas.. No part of this force on the Tele- 
graph Height was covered by intrenchments or by any kind 
of field-work. 

In the main Pass, facing the bridge, and destined to confront 
Foreesorigin. the 2nd Division of the English army, Prince Ments- 
ally posted in chikoff placed four battalions of light infantry,’ with 
pectin as.’ one battalion of rifles ;* and three out of those five 
Caan the battalions had orders to advance and skirmish in 

the vineyards. The other two battalions were kept 
massed in column. Near the bridge was posted a battalion of 
sappers and miners.’ Astride the great road, and disposed 
along the chain of hillocks which runs across the pass looking 
down on the bridge, the Prince placed two batteries of field 
artillery.1° These two batteries, acting together, and compris- 


1 The No.1 battalion of the same corps.—Anitchkoff, Chodasiewicz. 

2 Chodasiewicz. 

3 The battalions of the Moscow corps.—Anitchkoff, Chodasiewicz. 

* Viz., the Nos. 8 and 5 batteries of the 17th brigade of artillery. 

5 The four batteries of the Minsk corps, with several guns, were afterward 
moved into this part of the ground, as will be seen by-and-by. 


6 Thirteen battalions Of 750 Cach........ccieteceeeeeeseeeceeeserecnes 9,750 
One battery of position, 263 MEMN.......cccceeessereeseneeeeee eases 263 
One light: battery... .....c...cc ls ccseceeeeceteneousesaeecscteeeceoseeees 210 
Half of another light battery.............c.000e- grad deceete bi enulesene 105 

10,328 


Anitchkoff and Chodasiewicz, writing with opposite feelings and differing in 
many things, are strictly in accord as to the number of battalions posted in. 
this part of the field. 
~ 1 The four battalions of the Borodino corps.—Anitchkoff, Chodasiewicz. 
® The 6th battalion of Riflemen.—Jbid. ° Anitehkoff. 
10 Light batteries Nos. 1 and 2 of the 16th Artillery brigade.—Jéid. 


452 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


ing sixteen guns,' are here termed ‘the Causeway batteries.’ 
The force in this part of the field formed the centre of the line, 
and was under the command of Prince Gortschakoff.? 

The right wing of the Russian army was the force destined 
to confr ont, first our Light Division, and then the Guards and 
the Highlanders. It was posted on the slopes of the Kour- 
gane Hill. Here was the Great Redoubt, armed with its four- 
teen heavy guns ;° and Prince Mentschikoff was so keen to de- 
fend this part of the ground, that he gathered round the work, 
on the slopes of the hill, a force of no less than sixteen battal- 
ions of regular infantry,* besides the two battalions of sailors,° 
and four batteries of field artillery.6 The right of the forces 
on the Kourgané Hill rested on a slope to the east of the Less- 
er Redoubt, 7 and the left on the great road. Twelve of the 
battalions of regular infantry were disposed into battalion-col- 
umns posted at intervals and checker-wise on the flanks of the 
Great Redoubt. The other four battalions, drawn up in one 
massive column, were held as a reserve for ‘the right wing on 
the higher slope of the hill. Of the four ficld-batteries, one 
armed the Lesser Redoubt, another was on the high gr ound 


1 Prince Gortschakoff says that these guns were eighteen in number. 

2 The Borodino corps formed part of General Kiriakoff’s command ; but 
the nature of the ground and the course which the action took prevented him 
from having it in his actual control, and Gortschakoff, in the absence of the 
General commanding in chief, was the General to whom the corps would 
have to look for guidance. 

3 Prince Gortschakoff puts the numbers of these guns at twelve. Choda- 
siewicz supposed that the redoubt was armed with the guns of the No. 2 bat- 
tery of the 16th Artillery brigade; but the calibre of the gun and the how- 
itzer now at Woolwich prove that the ordnance which armed the redoubt 
were not a part of the regular field artillery, but were brought from Sebas- 
topol. 

4 The four battalions of the Kazan, or Prince Michael’s corps, the four bat- 
talions of the Vladimir corps, the four battalions of the Sousdal corps, and 
the four battalions of the Uglitz corps.—Anitchkoff, Chodasiewicz. 

®° Chodasiewicz. Anitchkoff calls this force a half battalion only; but 
Chodasiewicz saw the two battalions in march with their four guns, and I ac- 
cept his statement. Anitchkoff says that these men were thrown forward as 
skirmishers in the vineyards. 

° The No. 2 heavy battery of the 16th Artillery brigade, the No. 3 battery 
of position of the 17th brigade of Artillery, and the No. 3 battery of position, 
half of the No.3 light battery of the 14th Artillery brigade, and the half bat- 
tery belonging to the sailors.—Anitchkoff, or Chodasiewicz. The latter sup- 
poses that some of these batteries were posted more toward the centre with 
the reserve battalions. 

7 It fired five guns only at the time when the Highlanders advanced ; but 
it is believed that the three additional guns requisite to complete the battery 
were in the work at the beginning of the action. It was probably the No. 2 
battery of the 16th Artillery brigade referred to in the former note. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 453 


commanding and supporting the Great Redoubt, and the re- 
maining two were held in reserve.' General Kvetzinski com- 
manded the troops in this part of the field. On his extreme 
right, and posted at intervals along a curve drawn from his: 
right front to his centre rear, Prince Mentschikoff placed his 
cavalry—-a force Sones, 34002 lances, with three batteries 
of horse artiller 

Each of these bodies of hor se, when brought within sight of 
the Allies, was always massed in column. 

Thus, then, it was to bar the Pass and the great road, to de- 
fend the Kourgané Hill and to cover his right flank, that the 
Russian General gathered his main strength : ; and this was the 
part of the field destined to be assailed by our troops. That 
portion of the Russian force Which directly confronted the En- 
glish army consisted of 3400 cavalry, twenty-four battalions of 
infantry, and seven batteries of field-artillery, besides the four- 
teen heavy guns in the Great Redoubt, making together 23,400 
men‘ and eighty-six guns. 

But besides this force, Prince Mentschikoff, at the com- 
mencement of the action, had posted across the great road 
leading down to the bridge a force of seven battalions of in- 
fantry,° with two batteries® of artillery. These troops he call- 
ed his ‘Great Reserve; and they were, in fact, his last. Yet 
he held them so closely in rear of the battalions facing the 
bridge that they might be regarded as forces actually opera- 


1 Although I gather the numbers and descriptions of these forces from Rus- 
sian authorities, I draw much of my knowledge of the way in which they 
were disposed from the observation of our officers ; and it should be observed 
that the above statement applies to the state of the field at the time when the 
battle was going on, and not to the dispositions which Prince Mentschikoff 
may have made in the earlier part of the day. 

2 The Russian official authorities confess to but 8000. The force consist- 
ed of the brigade of Hussars, 6th division of cavalry, and two regiments of 
Cossacks of the Don.— Chodasiewicz. 

* The No. 12 Light Horse battery, 6th brigade of Horse Artillery ( Choda- 
spice), and two batteries of the Cossacks of the Don.—Anitchheff: 


Twenty-four battalions at.750 each..............eceseeeees 18,000 
Three heavy batteries at 263 each ........-..eceeceeeeeeers 789 
Six light batteries at 210 artillerymen each............. 1,260. 
omega Sas ame = osnanie das ocipcenescennissereccente> 3,400 

Men 23,449 
Nine batteries at eight guns each .............ee scene eee 72 
Heavy guns from Sebastopol in the Great Redoubt. a4 

Guns 86 


° The four battalions of the Volhvnia corps, and three battalions, Nos. 1, 
3, 4, of the Minsk corps. —Anitchkoff, Chodasiewicz. 

®° The No. 4 and No. 5 light batteries of the 17th brigade of Artillery. 
Chodasiewicz and Anitchkoff differ. 


454 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: [Cuap. XLIV.: 


ting in support. Plainly, this disposition of his troops was gov- 
erned by a keen anxiety to defend the great road and the 
Kourgané Hill, for it was so ordered that, to sustain the strug- 
gle there, it would cost him but a few moments to bring his 
last reserves into action; and, in truth, he committed himself so 
deeply to this, his favorite part of the battle-field, that, when 
he afterward endeavored to shift a portion of his reserves to- 
ward his left, he was unable to make their strength tell. 

It will be seen, however, that in the course of the action the 
“ _ Prince took off to his left to use against the French 

1e numbers : : : 

actually op. three of the battalions belonging to his great re- 
posed to the serve, and also moved in the same direction two 
the English re- light’ batteries, together with a few squadrons of 
spectively. —__ Hussars, which formed, as it seems, his. personal es- 
cort. So, omitting only from the calculation the change ef- 
fected by moving those horsemen,' it would follow that the 
whole force which, sooner or later, confronted the French, was | 
a force of 13,000 men? and thirty-six guns, and that the force 
which confronted the English was a force of 26,000 men,? with 
eighty-six guns, 

The forces with which the Allied commanders prepared to 
Forces of the assail this position were thus composed: There 
Halle. were some 30,000 Krench infantry and artillerymen,* 
with sixty-eight guns; and, added to this force, under the com- 
mand of Marshal St. Arnaud, was the division of 7000 Turkish 
infantry.6 With Lord Raglan, and present under arms, there 
was a force of fully 1000 cavalry, 25,000° infantry and artillery- 


1 T omit these horsemen from the calculation because I do not know their 
number. Anitchkoff calls the body ‘‘a portion of the Hussar brigade.” The 
French official account says the force was one of eight squadrons. I imagine 
that an estimate putting it at 400 would not be far from the truth. 

? Strictly, 12,998. This figure is attained by adding to the 10,328 before 
given, the three battalions taken from the Great Reserve (at 750 each), and 
the 420 artillerymen of the two light batteries which were moved during the 
action. 

* Strictly, 26,029. This figure is attained by adding to the 23,449 before 
detailed the four battalions of the Great Reserve which were dealt with by 
English alone, and by subtracting the 420 artillerymen referred to in the pre- 
ceding note. 

* Précis Historique, p. 101-102, which gives 30,204 as the total, but that 
is a computation of the foree embarked; and, since cholera was prevailing, 
. the deductions from strength between the 7th and the 20th of the month 

must have brought the numbers below 30,000. ‘ Jb. 

° ‘The ‘‘ morning state” which I have before me is of the 18th September, 
and it gives as present under arms (without including the cavalry, of which 
there was no ‘‘state”)a total of 26,004 officers and men, and, deducting the 
1600 men detached under Colonel Torrens, there remained 25,404 infantry 
and artillervmen. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 455 


men, and sixty pieces of field-artillery.! In all, the Allied ar- 
mies advancing upon the Alma comprised near 63,000 men and 
128 guns. 

- St. Arnaud, with 37,000 men and sixty-eight guns, and effect- 
ually supported by the fire of nine war-steamers,? was destined 
to confront a Russian force of 13,000 men and thirty-six guns. 
The English, with 26,000 men and sixty guns, had to deal with 
a Russian force comprising, so to speak, the same number of 
men, but having with it eighty-six guns.? Therefore the French 
had to do with somewhat more than one third of the Russian 
force ; and the other two thirds of it—two thirds of it, speak- 
ing roughly—were left to the care of the English. St. Arnaud 
was to his adversaries in a proportion not very far short of 
three to one ;* Lord Raglan was, so to speak, equal in numbers 
to his adversaries, and was inferior to them in point of artillery 
by a difference of twenty-six guns. 

That part of the position which was attacked by the French 
The tasks un- PYesented some physical obstacles to the advance of 
dertaken by | the assailants, but was not very strong in a military 
the English Sense, and was defended by no field-works. The 
respectively. ground attacked by the English did not oppose 
ereat physical obstacles to the advance of the assailants, but it 
was intrenched, and, besides, was so formed by nature as to give 
great destructive power, and, by consequence, great strength 
to an enemy defending it with the resources of modern war- 
fare. The French were covered and supported on their right 
by the sea and the ships; on their left by the English army.° 
The English had the French on their right, but they marched 
with their left flank quite bare. The French advanced upon 
heights well surveyed from the sea. Except in an imperfect 
way from maps, the English knew nothing of the ground be- 
fore them.’ No spies or deserters had come in. 


1 The official.‘‘ state” prepared for Lord Raglan gives two troops of horse 
artillery, and only seven batteries, but it omits the battery attached to the 
4th Division. ? Official dispatch of Admiral Hamelin. 

* In these calculations, as in those preceding them, the change effected by 
moving the horsemen of the escort is left unnoticed. 

4 Or, more strictly, 37 to 13. 

5 This sentence, perhaps, may help to elucidate the one which goes before 
it by showing what is meant when soldiers speak of ‘‘ the strength of a posi- 
tion.” In these days mere inert physical obstacles are commonly overcome 
or eluded ; and the security of the defender depends not in general upon 
those geographical features which would make access difficult for travelers, 
but rather upon such a conformation of ground as will give him the means 
of doing harm to his assailants. 


456 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


LT isa 

Late in the evening on the 19th, Marshal St. Arnaud, attend- 
ed by Colonel Trochu, rode up to the little post-house on the 
Bulganak in which Lord Raglan had established his quarters. 
He came to concert a plan of attack for the following day. 

From on board their ships, the French had long been busily 

pista : >. 

Conference the CUS#ged in surveying the enemy’s position, and by 
night before this time they had gathered a good deal of knowl- 
the battle be- edge of that part of the ground which lies near the 
naud and Lord sea-shore. They had ascertained, or found means of 
Beet inferring, that the stream was fordable at its mouth, 
and they moreover assured themselves that at the time of their 
last observations the West Cliff was not occupied in strength 
by the enemy. Upon these important discoveries Marshal St. 
The French Arnaud based his plan of attack. He proposed that 
Pian. the war-steamers, closing in as nearly as was prac- 
ticable, should move parallel with the land forces, and a little 
in advance; that under cover of their fire a portion of the 
French force should advance along the shore and seize the 
West Cliff; and that this movement should be followed up by 
a resolute, vigorous, and unremitting attack upon the enemy’s 
left flank and left front... M. St. Arnaud was at this time free 
The part taken from pain, and, knowing that now at last he had an 
ees. enemy in his front, and that a great conflict was 
ference. near at hand, he seemed to be fired with a more 
than healthy energy. Sometimes in English, sometimes in the 
rapid words of his own tongue, and always with vehement 
gesture, he labored to show how sure it was that the attack 
from his right centre would be fierce, unrelenting, decisive. 
Lord Raglan, cast in another mould, sat quiet, with governed 
features, restraining—or only, perhaps, postponing—his smiles, 
listening graciously, assenting, or not dissenting, putting for- 
ward no plan of his own, and, in short, eluding discussion. 
This method, perhaps, was instinctive with him; but, in his 
intercourse with the French, he followed it deliberately and 
upon system. He never forgot that to keep good our relations 
with the French was his great duty; and studying how best 
to avert the danger of misunderstandings, he had already made 
it his maxim that there was hardly any danger so great as the 
danger of controversy. Whether in any even small degree 
the English General had been brought to share the opinion 


' The plan was like that of the great Frederick at Leuthen, but with the 
difference that the force advancing to turn the enemy’s left was to be covered 
and supported by fire from the shipping. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF 'THE CRIMEA. 457 


entertained of M. St. Arnaud in the French capital and in the 
French army, the world will never know. Of a certainty, 
Lord Raglan dealt as though he held it to be a clear gain to 
be able to avoid intrusting the Marshal with a knowledge of 
what our army would be likely to undertake; but my belief is. 
that this, hisseemingly guarded method, was not so much based 
upon any thing which may have come to his ears from Paris 
or from the French camp, but rather upon his desire to ward 
off controversy, and. upon his true native English dislike of all 
premature planning. He was so sure of his troops, and so con- 
scious of his own power to act swiftly when the occasion might 
come, that, although he was now within half a march of the 
enemy’s assembled forces, he did not at all long to ruffle his 
mind with projects—with projects for the attack of a position 
not hitherto reconnoitred. 

M. St. Arnaud’s plan for turning the enemy’s left was to be 
executed by the French army, with the aid of the shipping; 
and the part which the English land forces should take in the 
‘action was a matter distinct. But for this, also, the French 
commander and his military counselors had carefully taken 
thought. 

To illustrate the operations which he proposed, M. St. Ar- 
French plan naud produced a rough map—a map slightly and 
for the opera- rapidly drawn, yet traced with that spirit and sig- 
English army. nificance which are characteristic of French military 
sketches. In this sketch Bosquet’s Division and the Turkish 
troops were represented as effecting the turning movement on 
the enemy’s left, and the Ist and 3rd French Divisions were 
shown to be-so deployed and so placed, that in the order of 
attack assigned to them by the sketch, they would confront al- 
most the whole face of the enemy’s position, leaving only one 
or two battalions to be dealt with in front by the English 
troops.!. So, to find some occupation for the English, the 
‘sketch represented our army as filing away obliquely, in order 
to turn the enemy’s right flank. Of course this plan rested 
entirely upon the assumption that the enemy’s front would be 
fully occupied (as represented in the sketch) by the French 
attack. 

Lord Raglan’s experience, or instinct, told him that no such 
plan as this could go for much until the assailing forces should 
come to measure their line with that of the enemy. So, with- 
out either combating or accepting the suggestion addressed to 
him, he simply assured the Marshal that he might rely upon 

* See the fac-simile of this plan, taken from the ‘ Pieces Officielles’ publish- 
ed by the French Government. 


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Cusp. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 459 


the vigorous co-operation of the British army. The French 
plan seems to have made little impression on Lord Raglan’s 
mind. He foresaw, perhaps, that the ingenuity of the even-: 
ing would be brought to nothingness by the teachings of the 
morrow. 

Whilst the French Marshal was striving, in his vehement 
St. Arnaud’s Way, to convey an idea of the vigor with which he 
demeanor. would conduct the attack, his appointed adviser, 
Colonel Trochu, whose mission it was to moderate the fire of 
his chief, thought it right to interpose with a question of a 
practical kind—a question as to the time and place for reliev- 
ing the French soldiers of their packs. Instantly, if so one 
may speak, St. Arnaud reared, for Trochu had touched him 
with the curb; and in the presence, too, of Lord Raglan. He 
angrily suppressed the question of the packs as one of mere 
detail. Yet, on the afternoon of the morrow, that question of 
the packs was destined to recur, and to govern the movements 
of the whole French army. 

Before the Marshal and Lord Raglan parted, it was agreed 
that Bosquet with his Division should advance at five o’clock 
in the morning, and that, two hours later, the rest of the Al- 
lied forces should begin their march upon the enemy’s position. 

This determination as to the time for marching was almost 

Result ofthe the only fruit which St. Arnaud drew from the in- 
conference.  terview. He had thought to engage his colleague 
in the plan contrived for the guidance of the English at the 
French head-quarters ; but when he came to be in the presence 
of the English General, he unconsciously yielded, as other men 
commonly did, to the spell of his personal ascendency ; and al- 
though he showed the sketch, and may have uttered, perhaps, 
a few hurried words to explain its meaning, he did not effect- 
ually bring himself to proffer advice to Lord Raglan. Either 
he altogether omitted the intended counsel, or else he so slur- 
red it over as not to win for it any grave notice from even the 
most careful of listeners. 
' When the conference ended, Lord Raglan came out with 
his guests to the door of the hut. M.St. Arnaud mounted his 
horse, and was elate. But he was elate, not with the knowl- 
edge of having achieved a purpose, but rather, it would seem, 
from the sense of that singular comfort which anxious men al- 
ways derived from the mere power of Lord Raglan’s presence. 
Perhaps, when the Marshal reached his quarters, he began to 
see that, after all, there was a gulf between him and the En- 
‘glish General, and that, notwithstanding his energy and bold- 
ness, he had been unaccountably hindered from passing it. 


460 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap, XLIV, 


Vii 

It had been determined that the troops should get under 
arms without bugle or drum. 

Silently, therefore, on the morning of the 20th of September, 
March of the 1854, the men of the Allied armies rose from their 
Allies. bivouac, and made ready for the march which was 
to bring them into the presence of the enemy. It was so early 
as half past five that Bosquet, with the 2nd French Division 
and the Turkish battalions, began his march along the coast ; 
and at seven o’clock the main body of the French army was 
under arms, and ready to march. But the position taken up 
by the English for the defense of the Allied armies on the 
Bulganak had imposed upon Lord Raglan the necessity of 
showing a front toward the east; and for the Divisions so em- 
Causes delay- ployed a long and toilsome evolution was needed 
ing the march in order to bring them into the general order of 
army. march.! At that time, too, there was a broad in- 
terval between our extreme right and Prince Napoleon’s Di- 
vision. Moreover, the line of the coast which the armies were 
to follow trended away toward the south west, forming an ob- 
tuse angle with the course of the stream (the Bulganak) on 
which the Allies had bivouacked ; and in the movement requi- 
site for adjusting the front of the Allied forces to the direction 
of the shore, the English marching upon the exterior are had 
to undergo more labor than those who moved near the pivot 
on which the variation of front was effected.? 

This was not all. The baggage-train accompanying our 
forces, though small in comparison with the incumbrances us- 
ually attending an army in the field, was large as compared 
with that of the French, and Lord Raglan (whose favorite anx- 
iety was concerning his reserve ammunition) refused to allow 
the convoy to be stripped of protection. The oblique move- 
ment of the troops toward their right was tending to leave the 
convoy uncovered ; and, in order that it should be again in- 
folded as in the previous day’s order of march, it was neces- 
sary to move it far toward our right. Lord Raglan insisted 
that this should be done; so on the morning of the long-ex- 
pected battle, and with the enemy in front, St. Arnaud and the 


1 Those divisions had been posted nearly at right angles to the front line, 
and the segment in which the troops would have to wheel in order to get 
into the line of march would be nearly 90 degrees. ‘ 

2 Several military Reports and documents explain this, but the plan pre- 
pared by the French Government shows with admirable clearness the nature 
of the evolution which the English army had to perform. See the plan. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 461 


whole French army, and the English army too, chafed bitterly 
at the delay they had to endure whilst strings of bullock-carts 
were slowly dragged westward into the true line of march. 
Besides, the enemy’s cavalry gave the English no leave to ex- 
amine the ground toward which they were marching; and 
whilst the French, being next to the sea, could make straight 
for the cliff already reconnoitred from the ships, the English 
army advanced without knowledge of that part of the position 
which it was to confront, and was twice compelled to make la- 
borious changes in the direction of its march. Therefore, for 
much of the delay which occurred there were good reasons ; 
but not for all. Sir George Brown had been directed on the 
night of the 19th to advance on the morrow at seven o’clock, 
and he imagined—it is strange if he, of all men, with his great 
knowledge of such things, was wrong upon a point of military 
usage—he imagined that the order would be repeated in the 
morning, and he waited accordingly. Also the English troops 
moved slowly. Time was growing to be of high worth, and, 
from causes which justified a good deal—though not quite all 
—of their delay, the English at this time were behindhand. 

In order that the operations of the day might be adjusted 
to the time which the English army required, orders were sent 
forward suspending for a while the advance of Bosquet’s col- 
umn; and at nine o’clock the main body of the French army 
came to a halt, and cooked their coffee. Whilst they rested, 
our troops, by moving obliquely toward their right, Were slow- 
ly overcoming the distance which divided them from the French 
left, and were, at the same time, working their way through 
the angle ‘which measured their divergence from the line of 
march. 

Of those composing an armed force there are few who un- 
derstand the -hinderances which block its progress; and natu- 
rally the French were vexed by the delay which seemed to be 
caused by the slowness of the English army. They, however, 
conformed with great care to the tardiness of our advance, and 
even allowed our army to gain upon them ; for, when the Allies 
reached the ground which sloped down toward the Alma, the 
heads of our leading columns were abreast of the French skirm- 
ishers.! 

Meanwhile the Allied steamers had been seeking opportuni- 
ties for bringing their guns to bear, and at 20 minutes past 10 
they opened fire.?, One or two of their missiles, though at a 

' Lord Raglan was amongst those who observed this fact, and he stated it 


in a letter which is before me. 
* Private MS. by Mr. Romaine, the Judge Advocate. J may here say gen- 


* 


462 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: = [Cmar. XLIV, 


very long range, reached some of those Russian battalions 
which stood posted in rear of the Telegraph. 

At half past 11 o’clock the English right had got into direct 
contact with the French left, and our Light and 2nd Divisions 
were marching in the same alignment as the 1st and 3rd Di- 
visions of our French Allies. 


Vv. 

Twice again there were protracted halts. The last of these 
The last halt took place at a distance of about a mile and a half 
Notes the rat. from the banks of the Alma. From the spot where 
tle. the forces were halted the ground sloped gently 
down to the river’s edge; and though some men lay prostrate 
under the burning sun, with little thought except of fatigue, 
there were others who keenly scanned the ground before them, 
well knowing that now at last the long-expected conflict would 
begin. They could make out the course of the river from the 
dark belt of gardens and vineyards which marked its banks, 
and men with good eyes could descry a slight seam running 
across a rising ground beyond the river, and could see, too, 
some dark squares or oblongs, encroaching like small patches 
of culture upon the broad downs. The seam was the Great 
Redoubt. The square-looking marks that stained the green 
sides of the hills were an army in order of battle. 

That 20th of September, on the Alma, was like some rcmem- 
bered day of June in England, for the sun was unclouded, and 
the soft breeze of the morning had lulled to a breath at noon- 
tide, and was creeping faintly along the hills. It was then that 
in the Allied armies there occurred a singular pause of sound 
—a pause so general as to have been observed and remember- 
ed by many in remote parts of the ground, and so marked that 
its interruption by the mere neighing of an angry horse seized 
the attention of thousands; and although this strange silence 
was the mere result of weariness and chance, it seemed to car- 


erally, to avoid repeated notes, that, whenever I speak of an event as hap- 
pening at a time stated with exactness, I do so on the authority of Romaine. 
He was a man so gifted with long sight, as well as with power of estimating 
numbers, and, though a civilian, was so thoroughly apt for-military business, 
that Lord Raglan used, at a later time, to call him ‘the eye of the army.’ 
During the action he rode an old hunter, steady enough to allow him to write 
without quitting his saddle; so, whenever he observed a change in the prog- 
ress of the action, he took out his watch and pocket-book and made at the 
minute the memoranda on which I rely. I am therefore very certain that 
the spaces of time intervening between any two events spoken of in this pre- 
cise way were exactly those which I give; but I have reason to think that 
the watches of men in the different camps had been differently set. 


e 


Cnap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.’ 463 


ry 4 meaning, for it was now that, after near forty years of 
peace, the great nations of Kurope were once more meeting for 
battle. 

Even after the sailing of the expedition the troops had been 
followed by reports that the war, after all, would be stayed; 
and the long, frequent halts, and the quiet of the armies on the 
sunny slope, seemed to harmonize with the idea of disbelief in 
the coming of the long-promised fight. But in the midst of 
this repose Sir Colin Campbell said to one of his officer s, ‘ This 

‘will be a good time for the men to get loose half their car- 
‘tridges ;! and when the command traveled on along the ranks 
of the Highlanders, it lit up the faces of the men one after an- 
other, assuring them that now at length, and after long ex- 
pectance, they indeed would go into action. They began 
obeying the order. And with beaming joy, for they came of 
a warlike race. Yet not without emotion of a graver kind. 
They were young soldiers, new to battle. 


VE 

Lord Raglan now crossed the front of Prince Napoleon’s Di- 
Meeting be- Vision in order to meet Marshal St. Arnaud, whose 
teen 7, ~— guidon was seen coming toward our lines. The 
Lord Raglan. two commanders rode forward together, inclining 
toward their left. No one was with them. They rode on till 
they came to one of those mounds or tumuli, of which there 
were many on the steppe. From that spot they scrutinized 
the enemy’s position with their field-glasses. 

' At this interview no change was made in that portion of 
the plan which determined that the French should turn the 
enemy’s left; but the part to be taken by the English was still 
in question, and St. Arnaud threw out or reviv ed the idea of a 
flank movement by the English on the enemy’s right.? Lord 
Raglan, however, now gazed upon the real ground which the 
French counselors of the night before had striven to scan in 
their imaginations, and, having an eye for country, he must 
have begun to see the truth. He must have begun to see that 
the. French, hugging the sea-shore, and pouring two fifths of 
their whole force against the undefended part of the opposite 
heights, would not only fail to confront the whole Russian 


1 The cartridges are delivered to each man in a packet, and, to avoid loss 
of time in presence of the enemy, a sufficient number should be ‘shaken 
‘loose’ before the troops are brought into action. 

_. # They had met before at. about “half past nine, but the Russian cavalry had 
not then quitted the heights, and they were obliged to postpone their recon- 
naissance. 3 Inferred from what follows, 


464 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


army in the way promised by the sketch, but would, in reality, 
contront only a small portion of it, leaving to the English the 
duty of facing the enemy along two thirds of their whole front. 
Of a certainty he did not entertain for a moment the idea of 
making a flank attack, but it was not according to his nature 
to explain to men their errors, and it seems he spoke so little 
that St. Arnaud did not yet know what the English General 
‘would do ;! but presently a general officer rode up and joined 
the two chiefs. Then the Marshal, closing his telescope, turn- 
ed to Lord Raglan and asked him ‘ whether he would turn the 
‘position or attack it in front ?? Lord Raglan’s answer was 
to the effect ‘that, with such a body of cavalry as the enemy 
‘had in the plain, he would not attempt to turn the position.” 

Whilst the chiefs were still side by side, it being now one 
o’clock, the advance sounded along the lines, and the French 
and the English armies moved forward close abreast. The 
Marshal then rode off toward his centre. 


VII. 
The orders for the advance were sent forward to Bosquet, 
Bosquet's ad- and, as soon as they reached him, he threw out 


vance. skirmishers and moved forward in two columns. — 
He divides his His right column was the brigade commanded by 
force. General Bouat. The left column was Autemarre’s 


brigade. Each brigade, massed in column,’ was followed by 
its share of the artillery belonging to the Division; and Bouat’s 
brigade was followed by the whole of the Turkish Division ex- 
cept two battalions. Toward Bosquet’s left, but far in his 
rear, there moved forward the Ist Division under Canrobert, 
and the 3rd Division under Prince Napoleon. These two di- 
visions advanced in the same alignment. The 4th Division, 
under General Forey, marched in rear of the 1st and 38rd Di- 
visions, and two Turkish battalions escorted the baggage.* 

The formation of Canrobert’s and Prince Napoleon’s Divis- 
Disposition of 1ONS was upon two lines. The first brigade of each 
here division was in front and deployed,® and the second 
army. brigade of each division followed the first brigade, 
and was massed in column.® 

1 Inferred from what follows. 

* This disposes of the notion which seems to have been really entertained 
by many of the French—the notion that Lord Raglan stood engaged to turn 
the enemy’s right. 3 Regiments in column at section distance. 

* Précis Historique mainly. 

° Not deployed into ‘line,’ according to the, English plan, but merely 
brought into a formation, which, leaving each battalion massed, places them 
ail in the same alignment. ° Regiments in column at section distance. 


Guar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 465 


The 4th French Division marched in the same order as the 
Ist and 8rd Divisions, except that its leading brigade was not 
deployed. The artillery of each division was infolded between 
its two brigades. 

On the immediate left of Prince Napoleon Sir De Lacy 
Of the English EXvans marched, with the troops of his Division 
anf massed in battalion columns,' and was followed by 
the 3rd Division in column. The batteries belonging to each 
of these divisions marched on its right or inner flank. 

Immediately on Sir De Lacy’s left the Light Division, pre- 
ceded by Norcott with a wing of the 2nd Rifle battalion in 
skirmishing order, moved forward, under Sir George Brown. 
The Division was massed in column,? and had the front and 
left flanks covered by rifiemen in extended order. It was sup- 
ported by the Ist Division, under. the Duke of Cambridge, 
and that, in turn, was followed by the 4th Division,’ under Sir 
George Cathcart. Sir George Cathcart, however, in accord- 
ance with a suggestion made by himself, was authorized to 
take ground to his left, and place his force in échelon to the 
Ist Division.! 

The three great infantry columns thus composing the left 
wing of our army were covered in front, left flank, and rear 
by riflemen, in extended order, and by the cavalry. The bat- 
tery belonging to each division marched on its right or inner 
flank. 

But soon Major Norcott with his riflemen got on so far in 
advance as to provoke a fire from the Russian skirmishers, 
then swarming in the vineyards below, and some rifle balls. 
shot from that quarter came dropping into the ground near 
the column formed by the Light Division. Almost at the same 
moment the artillerymen on the Russian heights began to try 
their range; and, although the air was so clear that our men 
could see and watch the flight of the cannon balls, thrown at 
so long a range, it seemed prudent for our leading divisions to 
go intoline. Those divisions, therefore, were halted, and their 
deployment immediately began. 


‘In continuous battalion columns right in front at battalion distance. Sir 
De Lacy’s touched Prince Napoleon’s Division, and it was thought right to 
assimilate its order of march to that adopted by the Prince. 

2 In double column of companies from the centre. 

3 Minus the 63rd and two companies of the 46th, left, under the command . 
of General Torrens, at the place of disembarkation. The force actually with 
Sir George during the action consisted of the 20th, 21st, and 68th Regiments, 
the Ist battalion of Rifles, and Townsend’s battery. 

4 Sir George Cathcart marched with the head of his column (at quarter 
distance right in front) in line with the rear companies of the Ist Division, 


U2 


466 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV 


In deploying, Sir De Lacy Evans, being pressed upon by 
The leading Prince Napoleon’s Division on his right, was com- 
Divisions of —_ pelled to take ground to his left, and to encroach 

e English : 
army deploy upon a part of the space which Sir George Brown 
ape tine. had expected to occupy with his Division. 

The deployment of the Light Division was effected by each 
The Light Di- regiment with beautiful precision ;* but, unhappily, 
ie rizht the division was not on its right ground. 
ground. Sir George Brown was near-sighted, and had not 
accustomed himself to repair the defect, as some commanders 
have done, by a constant and well-practiced use of glasses ; 
and, on the other hand, the very fire and energy of his nature, ” 
and his almost violent sense of duty, prevented him from get- 
ting into the habit of trusting to the eyes of other men. For 
hours in the early morning the division had been wearied by 
having to incline toward its right. At half past eleven the 
effort was reversed, and the division then labored to take 
ground to its left. But, in that last direction, it had not taken 
ground enough. Lord Raglan, with his quick eye, had seen 
the fault, and sent an order? to have it corrected. Not con- 
tent with this, he soon after rode up to the Division, and, fail- 
ing to see Sir George Brown at the moment, told Codrington 
that the Division must take more ground to the left. Then, 
unhappily, when he had uttered the very words which would 
have thrown the British army into its true array, and averted 
much evil, Lord Raglan was checked by his ruling foible. He 
had already sent the order to the divisional general, and he 
could not bear to pain or embarrass him by pressing the exe- 
eution of it upon one of his brigadiers. So he recalled his 
wholesome words ;3 the Division failed to take ground enough 
to the left; and, when the deployment was complete, Sir 
George Brown had the grief of seeing his right regiment (the 
7th Fusileers) overlapped by the left—nay, even by the centre 
—of Pennefather’s brigade. The fault was not retrieved. It 
was fruitful of confusion. 

The artillery attached to our two leading divisions was now 
also drawn up in line; and Sir George Brown reckoned that 
he alone showed a front extending to nearly a mile. 


" The deployment was upon the two centre companies of the division. 
Whilst the movement was proceeding, one man, a sergeant, was killed by a 
rifle ball. ‘This was probably the first death in our lines. 

* Colonel Lysons, I think, carried it. 

* I derive my knowledge from an officer who heard Lord Raglan’s words. 
~ * When the deployment took place, the 7th Fusileers was in rear of the 
95th Regiment, and it afterward, as will be seen, marched through it. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: 467 


At the same time the Duke of Cambridge, at Sir George 
Brown’s request, altered the formation of his Division by disse 
tributing it into a line of columns.! 

These changes having been completed, the English army re- 
asc sumed its march ; and, the leading divisions coming 
continued. more closely within range, and being a little galled 
by the enemy’s fire, Sir George Brown halted, and tried the 
experiment of wheeling into open column. Afterward, how- 
ever, he returned to his line formation, and in that order march- 
ed forward.? 


VIUIl. 

So now the whole Allied armies, hiding nothing of their 
splendor and their strength, descended slowly into the valley ; 
and the ground on the right bank of the river is so even and 
so gentle in its slope, and, on the left bank, so commanding, 
that every man of the inv aders could be seen from the Oppo- 
site heights. 

The Russian officers had been accustomed all their days to 
Spectacle pre- Military inspections and vast reviews; but they 
sented to the. now saw before them that very thing for the con- 


- Russians by 


the advance of fronting of which their lives had been one long re- 
the Allies. hearsal. They saw a European army coming down 
in order of battle—an army arrayed in no spirit of mimicry, 
and not at all meant to aid their endless study of tactics, but 
honestly marching against them, with a mind to carry their 
heights and take their lives; and, gazing with keen and crit- 
ical eyes upon this array of strangers, whose homes were in 
lands far away, they looked upon a phenomenon which raised 
their curiosity and their wonder, and which promised, too, to 
throw some new light on a notion ‘they had lately been for ming. 

The whole anxiety of Prince Mentschikoff had been for his 
right. If he could hold the Main Pass, and scare the Allies 
from all endeavor to turn his right flank, he believed himself 
safe; and it had been clear long ago that his conflict in this 
part ‘of the field would be with the English... It was therefore 
the more useful to try to spread amongst the Russian.troops 
an idea that the English, all powerful at’ sea, were thoroughly 
worthless as soldiers. 

The working of this little cheat had been hitherto aided by 


1¢ A line of contiguous quarter-distance columns.’ 

* My knowledge respecting the movements and evolutions of our infantry 
divisions is derived mainly from original MSS. in my possession, written by 
Sir George Brown, the Duke of Cambridge, Sir De Lacy Evans, and Sir 
George Cathcart. 


468 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


Notion whicn Circumstance. With the force under Mentschikoff 
the Russian there were two battalions of Russian seamen; and 
roaiers hid jo these men, partly from their clumsiness in manceu- 
entertain of the vring, partly from their sailor-like whims, and part- 
Magiishammy. Jy no doubt, from the mere fact of their being a 
small and peculiar minority, had become a subject of merri- 
ment to the soldiery of the regular land forces. The Russian 
soldiery, therefore, were prepared to receive the impression 
that the red-coats now discernible in the distance were battal- 
ions of sailors, men of no more use in a land engagement than 
their own derided seamen. This idea had fastened so well 
upon the mind of the Russian army that, before the battle be- 
gan, 1t was shared by some of the more illiterate of the officers, 
and even, it was said, in one instance, by a general of division. 
But the sight now watched with keen eyes from the enemy’s 
Surprise atthe Heights was one which seemed to have some bear- 
sight ofthe ing upon the rumor that the English were power- 
ergish amy. Jess in a land engagement. The French and the 
Turks were in the deep, crowded masses which every soldier 
of the Czar had been accustomed to look upon as the forma- 
tions needed for battle, but, to the astonishment of the Russian 
officers, the leading divisious of the men in red were massed in 
no sort of column, and were clearly seen coming on in a slen- 
der line—a line only two deep, yet extending far from east to 
west. They could not believe that with so fine a thread as 
that the English General was really intending to confront their 
massive columns. Yet the English troops had no idea that 
their formation was so singular as to be strange in the eyes of 
military Europe. Wars long passed had taught them that 
they were gifted with the power of fighting in this order, and 
it was as a matter of course that, upon coming within range, 
they had gone at once into line. 
_ Meanwhile the war-steamers—eight French and one English 
Fire from the —-had pushed forward along the shore in single . 
shipping. file, moving somewhat in advance of the land forces ; 
and now, at twenty-five minutes past one o’clock, the leading 
vessels opened fire against the four guns at the village of Ulu- 
kul Akles, and again ‘tried the skill of their gunners upon the 
distant masses of infantry which occupied the Telegraph Height 
and the low flat ledge at its base. Convinced that his chief 
Movemnt had been guilty of a grievous error in placing the 
made without Taroutine and the militia battalions on this low, nar- 
‘Taroutine and TOW ledge, General Kiriakoff, who commanded in 


1 Chodasiewicz. 


Cuap.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 469 


the ‘Militia this part of the field, had tried by indirect means to 
battalions. procure a change of plan, but. had not ventured to 
say any thing on the subject to Prince Mentschikoff himself. 
It is plain, however, that Kiriakoff’s opinion getting abroad 
was adopted by the officers of these two corps; for first the 
militia battalions, and then the battalions of the Taroutine 
corps, Without orders, and without having been assailed or 
touched (except perhaps by a chance shot or two at very long 
range from the shipping), began a retrograde movement, and 
slowly ascended the steep hill till they gained a more come 
manding position at no great distance from the Telegraph. 
No effort was abe to check this seemingly spontaneous move- 
ment." 
IX. 

At half past one o’clock a round shot from the opposite 
Half past one heights came ripping the ground near Lord Rag- 
o'clock. Can- Jan, and it marked the opening of the battle be- 
nonade direct- 5 . 
ed against the tween the contending land forces, for in the next 
English line. instant the enemy began to direct.a steady cannon- 
ade against the English line. At first no one fell, but present- 
ently an artilleryman riding in front of his gun bent forward 
his head, handled the reins with a convulsive grasp, and then, 
uttering a loud, inarticulate sound, fell dead. The peace of 
Europe had been so long, that to many men the sight was a 
new one; and of the young soldiers who stood near, some im- 
agined that their comrade had fallen down in a sudden fit; for 
they hardly yet knew that for the most part in modern war 
fare death comes as though sent by blind chance, no one knows 
from whence or from whom. 

Since the enemy’s artillery fire had now become brisk, our 
Men ofour leading infantry divisions were halted, and the men 
leading divis: ordered to lie down. Soon afterward it was found 


ions ordered to ap ate pee 
aera’ that the Ist Division had also come within range, 
vision deploy- and it was then forthwith thrown into line. In 
edintoline. preparing for this manceuvre, the Duke of Cam- 
bridge took care that ground should not be wanting. Both 
on his right and on his left he took more ground than had 
been occupied by the division which marched in his front. 
Whilst the Light Division in his front was jammed in and en- 
tangled with the 2nd Division, the Duke had the happiness of 
seeing his Guards and Highlanders s well extended, and compe- 


‘ General Kiriakoff’s statement, confirmed by Romaine, who observed and 
noted the movement. ‘The General thought the change of position requi- 
site, but he admits that a retrograde movement of this kind just before the 
commencement of the battle, was a grave evil. 


470 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV, 


tent to act along the whole length of that superb line. The 
effect of this deployment was, that the extreme right of the 
Duke’s line became a force operating in support to the 2nd 
Division, and that a part of his Highland Brigade, reaching 
much farther eastward than the extreme left of the Light Di- 
vision, became in that part of the field the true front of the 
British line. When this mancuvre was completed, the men 
of the Ist Division lay down. 

Observing the extent of ground occupied by the 1st Divi- 
Sir Richara S101, Lord Raglan at once saw that the 3rd Division 
eee oe would not have room to manceuyre in the same 
port the alignment with the Duke of Cambridge. He there- 
ee fore ordered Sir Richard England to support the 
Guards. It was this or some other order sent nearly at the 
same time which, for some reason, good or fanciful, Lord Rag- 
Jan chose to have carried quietly. The directions had been 
given, and the aid-de-camp was whirling round his charger in 
order to take a swift flight with the message, when Lord Raglan 
stopped him and said, ‘Go quietly; don’t gallop.’ He seemed 
to like that whenever the enemy pointed a field-glass toward 
the English head-quarters, he should look upon a scene of tran- 
quillity and leisure. 

Our batteries tried their range, but without effect, and they 
ceased to fire, reserving their strength for the time when they 
would come to close quarters. 

The batteries on the Telegraph Height did not yet open fire 
upon the French columns. 

Lord Raglan conceived that the operation determined upon 
by the Fr ench ought to take full effect before he engaged the 
English army in an assault upon the enemy’s heights; and per- 
haps, if the whole body of the Allies had been one people, un- 
der the command of one general, their advance would have 
been effected in échelon, and the left would have been kept 
out of fire whilst the effort on the right was in progress; but 
the pride of nations must sometimes be suffered to deflect the 
course of armies; and although there was no military value 
in any of the ground north of the vineyards, Lord Raglan, it 
seems, did not like to withhold his mfantry whilst the French 
were executing their forward movement. Since our soldiers 
lay facing downwards upon the smooth slope which looked 
against the enemy’s batteries, they were seen, every man of 
them, from head to foot by the Russian artiller ymen, and they 
drew upon themselves a studious fire from thirty guns. 

Thus the first trial our men underwent in the action was a 
trial of passive, enduring courage. They had to lie down, with 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 471 


Fireunder- no duty to perform, except the duty of being mo- 
eeuwhiktiy. tionless, and they made it their pastime to watch the 
ing down. play of the engines worked for their destruction— 
to watch the jet of smoke—the flash—the short, momentous 
interval—and then, happily and most often, the twang through 
the air above and the welcome sound of the shot at length im- 
bedded in earth. But sometimes, without knowing whence it 
came, a man would suddenly know the feel of a rushing blast 
sat a mighty shock, and would find himself bespattered with 

the brains of the comrade who had just been speaking to him. 
When this happened, two of the comrades of the man killed 
would get up and gently lift the quivering body, carry it afew - 
paces in rear of the line, then quietly return to their ranks, and 
again liedown.t This sort of trial is well borne by our troops. 
They are so framed by nature that, if only they knew clearly 
what they have to do, or to leave undone, they are pleased and 
animated, nay, even soothed by a little danger. For, besides 
that they love strife, they love the arbitr ament of chance, and 
a game where death is the forfeit has a str ange, gloomy charm 
for them. Among the guns ranged on the opposite heights to 
take his life, a man would single out his favorite, and make it 
feminine for the sake of endearment. There was hardly, per- 
haps, a gun in the Great Redoubt which failed to be called by 
some corrupt variation of ‘ Mary’ or ‘ Elizabeth.’ It was plain 
that our infantry could be in a kindly humor whilst lying down 
under fire. They did not, perhaps, like the duty so well as an 
animating charge with the bayonet; but if they were to be 
judged from their demeanor, they preferred it to a church pa- 
rade.. They were in their most gracious temper. Often, when 
an officer rode past them, they would give him the fruit of their 
steady and protracted view, and advise him to move a little on 
one side or the other to avoid a coming shot. And this the 
men would do, though they themselves, however well their 
quickened sioht might warn them of the coming shot, lay riv- 
eted to the earth by duty. 


X. 

The level posture of our infantry threw into strong promi- 
nence the figure of every mounted man who rode along their 
lines, but the group of horsemen composing or following the 
-head-quarter staff was so marked by the white flowing plumes 
of the officers, that at a distance of a mile and a half it was a 
conspicuous object to the naked eye; and a Russian artillery- 


’ Casualties of this sort were going on here and there along our line, but 
the exact incident described in the text was observed in the 30th Regiment. 


472 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


man at the Causeway batteries could make out with a common 
field-glass that, of the two or three officers generally riding 
abreast at the head of the plumed cavalcade, there was one, in 
a dark blue frock, whose right arm hung ending in an empty 
Cannonade di- sleeve. In truth, Lord Raglan at this time was so 
Lariiacia Often standing still, or else was riding along the line 
and his staff. of our prostrate infantry at so leisurely a pace, that 
he and the group about him could not fail to become a mark 
for the Russian artillery. The enemy did not, as it seemed, be- 
gin this effort malignantly, and at first, per haps, he had no far- 
ther thought than that of subjecting the English head-quarters 
to an ordinary cannonade, and forcing them to choose a more 
retired ground for their surveys. 

Still, as might be expected, the Russian artillerymen could 
not easily brook the conclusion that, whilst the English Gen- 
eral chose to remain under their eyes, and within range, it was 
beyond the power of their skill to bend him from his path, or 
even, as it seemed, to break the thread of his conversation ; so 
at length, growing earnest, they opened fire upon the group 
from a great number of guns; but in vain, for none of the staff 
at this time were struck. Failing with round shot, the enemy 
tried shells—shells with the fuses so cut as to burst them in 
the air a little above the white plumes. This method was tried 
so industriously and with so much skill, that a few feet over 
the heads of Lord Raglan and those around him there was kept | 
up for a long time an almost constant bursting of shells. Some- 
times the missiles came singly, and sometimes in so -thick a 
flight that several would be exploding nearly at the same 
moment, or briskly one after the other, right and left, and all — 
around. The fragments of the shells, when they burst, tore 
their shrill way down from above, harshly sawing the air; and 
when the novice heard the rush of the shattered missile along 
his right ear, and then along his left, and imagined that he felt 
the wind of another fragment of shell come rasping the cloth 
on his shoulders almost at the same moment, it seemed to him 
hardly possible that the iron shower would leave one man of 
the group untouched. But the truth is that a fragment of 
shell rending the air with its jagged edges may sound much 
nearer than it is. None of the staff were wounded at this 
time. 

Some of the suite were half vexed and half angry, for they 
knew the value of their chief’s life, and they conceived that he 
was affronting great risk without due motive, and from mere 
inattention to danger. The storm of missiles generally fell. 
most thickly when Lord Raglan happened to be riding near 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 473 


the great road; for the enemy, having got the range of that 
point, always labored to make the bursting of his shells coincide 
with the moment when our head-quarters were passing. This 
soon came to be understood, and thenceforth, when the head- 
quarter group were going to cross the Causeway, they rode at 
it briskly as at a leap, and spanned it with one or two strides, 
thus leaving the prepared storm of shells to burst a little be- 
hind them. This effort of the Russian artillery against Lord 
Raglan and the group surrounding him lasted a long time, and 
was carried on upon a scale better proportioned to the destruc- 
tion of a whole division than to the mere object of warning off 
a score of horsemen. If the fire thus expended had been 
brought to bear on Pennefather’s brigade, it might have maim- 
ed the English line in a vital part of the field. 


XI. ; 

The time was now come when the Allies could measure 
The Allies their front with the enemy’s position. It will be 
could now er Pemembered that the plan’ proposed to Lord Rag- 
front with that lan the night before by Marshal St. Arnaud rested 
ofthe enemy. pon the assumption that the whole of the enemy’s 
forces except two or three battalions would be confronted by 
the French army, and that therefore the only opportunity for 
important service which the English army could find would be 
that of making a great flank movement against the enemy’s 
right; but it had long become plain that only a portion of the 
Russian army would be met by the French, and that in pro- 
viding a front to show against the main body of the Russian 
The bearing army there remained to the English an ample field 
which thisad- of duty; and, now that the invading armies had 
hemes ~=come within cannon-shot range, it began to be seen 


had upon the : i 
plan which the that the entire front presented by the Ist and 3rd 
French had mage to Lie : ° “hes 
proposedtothe French Divisions, and by our 2nd and Light Divi- 
rage sions, would be only just commensurate with the 


length of the position which the Russian commander was oc: 
cupying. 


Russian Army. 


7 was wea 


| | 


English Army. French Army. 


1 See the fac-siimile. 


474 ' INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XLIV. 


Of course, therefore, if Lord Raglan had not already rejected 
the French plan of a flank attack by our forces, it would have 
now fallen to the ground. It had never made any impression 
on his mind.! 

The Allies were now so close to the enemy’s position that 
The groma the general of each of the five leading divisions 
which each of eould form a judgment as to the particular sphere 
the leading di- : ; 3 A 
visions had to. Of action which awaited him. To Bosquet the ad- 
wi vance against the West Cliff had long ago been as- 
signed. Canrobert faced toward the White Homestead and 
those spurs of the Telegraph Height which lie toward the west. 
Prince Napoleon confronted the centre and the eastern steeps 
of the Telegraph Height. Sir De Lacy Evans, with the 2nd 
Division, faced the village of Bourliouk; and it seemed at this 
time that his left would not reach farther up the river’s bank 
than the bridge, for Sir George Brown had been reckoning that 
his first or right brigade would be charged with the duty of 
attacking the enemy’s position across the great road, and that 
it would be his left, or Buller’s brigade, which would assail the 
Great Redoubt. | 

The generals of the five leading divisions were thus direct- 
ing their forces, and already the swarms of skirmishers thrown 
forward by the French, and the thinner chains of riflemen in 
advance of our divisions, were drawing close to the vineyards, 
and beginning their combats with the enemy’s sharpshooters ; 
but then, and with a suddenness so strange as to suggest the 
The village of idea of some pyrotechnic contrivance, the whole 
Ahie bebe village of Bourliouk, except the straggling houses 
enemy. which skirted it toward the east, became wrapped: 
in tall flames.2- No man could live in that conflagration; and 


1 T infer this from the fact that those with whom Lord Raglan was thor- 
oughly confidential in such matters never heard him speak of it. Lord Rag- 
lan, as we saw, distinctly and finally rejected the plan at the close of his in- 
terview with St. Arnaud. It became a plan simply preposterous as soon Aas it 
was apparent that St. Arnaud would not confront any part of the Russian army 
except their left wing; for to make two flank movements, one against the 
enemy’s left, and the other against his right, and to do this without having 
any force wherewith to confront the enemy’s centre, would have been a plan 
requiring no comment to show its absurdity. The French accounts, whether 
official or quasi-official, have always persisted in saying that Lord Raglan 
had engaged, and afterward failed to make, a movement on the enemy’s right 
flank. ‘This is the only reason why the matter requires any thing like 
careful elucidation. 

? The great number of haystacks, and the peculiar nature of the hay, were 
the causes which made the conflagration so instantaneously complete. The 
hay of that country is full of stiff, prickly stems, which resist compression, 
and so make ample room for air. 


Car. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA: 448 


the result was that in one minute a third of the ground on 
which the English army had meant to operate was, as it were, 
blotted out of the field. . If this firing of the village took place 
under the orders of the Russian commander, it was the most 
sagacious of all the steps he took that day, for his gravest 
source of care was the want of troops suflicing for the whole 
extent of the position at which he grasped, and therefore an 
operation which took away a large part of the battle-field was 
SOULE of great advantage to him. Our infantry were im- 
which this - mediately thrown into trouble. The Light Division, 
apa tens as we saw, did not take ground enough on the left, 
the, Hatish and the firing of the village now cut short our front . 

on the right. Sir De Lacy Evans, thus robbed of 
space, was obliged to keep his second brigade in rear of the 
first, and even then he continued to overlap the right of the 
Light Division. 

The smoke from the burning village was depressed, and 
gently turned toward the bridge by the faint breeze which 
came from the sea. There, for hours, in a long fallen pillar of 
cloud, it lay singularly firm and compact, obscuring the view 
- of those who were near it, but not at all staining the air in any 
other part of the field. 


XII. 

The operations of the great column intrusted to General 
General Bos. Bosquet now began to take effect. Bosquet was a 
quet. man in the prime of life. Ten years of struggle and 
frequent. enterprise in Algeria had carried him from the rank 
of a lieutenant to the rank of a general officer;! and he was 
charged on this day not only with the command of his own— 
the 2nd—Division, but with the command of the troops which 
formed the Turkish Contingent. The whole column under his 
orders numbered about 14,000 men. The Arabs and Kabyles 
of Algeria, though men of a fierce and brave nature and prone 
to petty strife, are so wanting in the power of making war with 
effect, that, as far as concerns the art of fighting, they can 
scarcely be said to have given much schooling to the bold and 
skillful soldiery of France; but the deserts, the broad solitudes, 
and the great mountain range of Northern Atrica, have inured 
the French army to some of those military toils which are next 
im worth to the business of the actual combat; and for Bos- 
quet, the hero of many a struggle in the passes of the Middle 
and the Lesser Atlas, it was no new problem to have to cross 


1 A brigadier; and now, at the time of the Crimean war, he was a generul 
of division. 


476 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cnar. XLIV. 


a stream and carry a body of troops to the summit of a hill 
with a steep-looking face. 

In the morning he had ridden forward, escorted by a few 
Spahis, to reconnoitre the ground with his own eyes, and thus, 
and by the aid of the careful surveys effected by the naval 
men, he was able to assure himself, not only that the river 
could be passed at its bar, but that troops there crossing it 
would be likely to find the means of getting round and ascend- 
ing to the summit of the cliff from the southwest. Hxamining 
also the face of the cliff farther inland, he saw that the broken 
ground opposite to the village of Almatamack could be easily 
- ascended by foot soldiers; and he also, no doubt, perceived 
that the road leading up from the village (unless it should prove 
to have been effectually cut or guarded by the enemy), would 
give him a passage for his artillery. Upon these observations 
His plan of | Bosquet based his plan. He resolved.to march in 
operations. = person with Autemarre’s brigade upon the village 


of Almatamack, there to cross the river, and afterward en-. 


deavor to ascend the plateau at the point where the road from 
Almatamack goes up between the West Cliff and the Telegraph 
Height; but he ordered General Bouat, with his brigade, and 
with the Turkish Contingent, to incline far away toward his 
right, to try to pass the river at its bar, and then to find the 
best means he could for getting his troops up the cliff. 

The two bodies of troops under Bosquet’s command began 
Advance of their diverging movement at the same time; and 
dor Bauuet' before two o’clock the swarms of skirmishers which 
person. covered the front of the columns were pushing their 
way through the village of Almatamack, and the vineyards 
on either side of it. A few moments more, and they were 
firing with a briskness and vivacity which warmed the blood 
of the many thousands of hearers then new to war. One of 
our officers, kindling a little with the excitement thus roused, 
and impatient, perhaps, that the French should be in action be- 
fore our people, could not help drawing Lord Raglan’s atten- 
tion to the firing on our right. But the stir of French skirm- 
ishers through thick ground was no new music to Lord Fitz- 
roy Somerset. Rather, perhaps, it recalled him for a moment 
to old times in Estremadura and Castile, when, at the side of 
the great Wellesley, he learned the brisk ways of Napoleon’s 
infantry. So, when the young officer said,‘The French, my 
‘Lord, are warmly engaged,’ Lord Raglan answered, ‘Are 
‘they? I can not catch any return fire.’ His practiced ear 
had told him what we now know to be the truth. No troops 
were opposed to the advance of Bosquet’s columns in this part 


« under Bouat. 


Cuapv. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. | -A4% 


of the field; but it is the custom of French skirmishers, when 
they get into thick ground near an enemy, to be continually 
firing. They do this, partly to show the chiefs behind them 
what progress they are making, and partly, it would seem, in 
order to give life and spirit to the scene. 

When General Bouat reached the bank of the river, he found 
Advance ofthe that the bar of sand at its mouth made it possible 
detached foree for his men to keep good their footing against the 
waves flowing in from the sea; and in process of 
time, with all his infantry, including the Turkish battalions, he 
succeeded in gaining the left bank of the river. He could not, 
however, carry across his artillery, and he therefore sent it 
_ back, with orders to follow the march of Autemarre’s brigade. 

When he reached the left bank of the river, Bouat found an 
opening in the cliff before him which promised to give him 
means of ascent. Into this opening he threw some skirmish- 
ers, and these, encountering no enemy, were followed by the 
main body of the brigade, and by the Turkish battalions. Pur- 
suing the course thus opened to him, Bouat slowly crept for- 
ward with his column, and wound his way up and round to- 
ward the summit of the cliff But it was only by marching 
with a very narrow front that he was able to effect this move- 
ment, and it was not until a late period of the action that he 
was able to show himself in force upon the plateau. Even then 
he was without artillery. The troops under his command had 
not an opportunity of engaging in any combat with the ene- 
my, because they marched upon that part of the heights which 
the Russian General had determined to leave unoccupied. 

Meanwhile Bosquet, marching in person with Autemarre’s 
Farther ad- brigade, traversed the village of Almatamack, ford- 
aang ed the river at ten minutes past two o’clock, and 
ade. immediately began to ascend the road leading up 
to the plateau. The road, he found, was uninjured, and guard- 
ed by no troops. His artillery began the ascent, and mean- 
while the keen and active Zouaves, impatient of the winding 
road, climbed the heights by shorter and steeper paths, and so 
swiftly, that our sailors, looking from the ships (men accus- 
tomed to perpendicular racing), were loud in their praise of the 
briskness with which the Frenchmen rushed up and ‘ manned’ 
the cliff. As yet, however, Bosquet had encountered no en- 
emy. 

It has been seen that the position taken up by Prince Ments- 
Guns brought chikoff fell short of the sea-shore by a distance of 
out against = s more than two miles, and that he was not in milita- 


him from Ulu- ; 
kul Akles. = ry occupation of the cliff,now ascended by Bosquet 


473° INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV, 


with Autemarre’s brigade; but also, it will be remembered, 
that at the village, in rear of the .cliff, called Ulukul Akies, 
there had been posted some days before one of the Minsk bat- 
talions of infantry, with four pieces of light artillery, and that 
the detachment had there remained. These four guns were 
now brought out of the village, and, after a time, were placed 
in battery at a spot near the village of Ulukul Tiouets, and 
within range of the point where the Zouaves were beginning 
to crown the summit of the cliff. The ‘Minsk’ battalion was — 
not brought into sight, but at some distance, on the cliff over- 
looking the beach, there could be seen some squadrons of 
horse. 

As soon as a whole battalion of Zouaves had gained the 
Bosquct, after SUMmit, they were drawn up and formed on ‘the 
amomentary plateau. No shot was as yet fired by the enemy; 
ih iane and General Bosquet, with his staff, ascended a tu- 
on the cliff —  mulus, or mound, on the top of the cliff, i in order to 
reconnoitre the ground. 

Meanwhile, his artillery was coming up, and the first two of 
his guns had just reached the summit, when one of the car- 
riages broke down. ‘This accident embarrassed the rest of the 
column, and whilst the hinderance lasted the enemy opened fire 
from his four guns.1. The fire and the breaking down of the 
gun-carriage produced for the moment an ill effect upon the 
head of the French column, and one of its battalions fell back 
under the shelter of the acclivity. But this check did not last. 
The road blocked by the broken-down gun-carriage was quick- 
ly cleared, the guns were moved up rapidly, and swarms of 
skirmishers pr essed up in all directions. Then the troops 
which were already on the summit moved forward, and lodged 
themselves upon a part of the plateau a little in advance of the 
steep by which they had ascended.? 

As soon as he began to hear guns in the direction of the 
Measurestaken West Cliff, Kiriakoff took from his reserves two of 
by Kiriakoff — his ‘ Moscow’ battalions, and posted them, the one 
upon observing 
Bosquet's turn- low down, and the other higher up, on that part of 
ing movement. the hill which looked down upon the White Home- 
stead. He also drew from his reserve eight light pieces of ar- 
tillery, and placed them in battery facing toward the sea, so as 
to command, though at a long range, the part of the plateau 
which Bosquet crossed by the Hadji road. Kiriakoff did not 


1 Half of the No. 4 battery of the 17th brigade of the Russian artillery. 

2 Sir Edward Colebrooke saw this operation from the deck of one of our 
ships of war, and describes it very well in his memorial. He was a skillful 
and very accurate observer of military movements. 


Cuap. XLIV.} INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 479 


take upon himself to make any other dispositions for dealing 
with the turning movement which threatened his left. 
Amongst the French who were gaining the summit of the 
Horsemen on plateau, no one seems to have divined the reason 
the gle why a little body of Russian horsemen should have 
made its appearance on the cliff overlooking the sea, nor why, 
without attempting hostile action, it had tenaciously clung to 
the ground. Those troopers were the attendants of a man in 
great trouble. They were the escort of Prince Mentschikoff. 


XIII. 


The enemy’s survey of the Allied armies had been so care- 
8 lessly made, and had been so little directed toward 

e effect of 
Bosquet'sturn- the sea-shore, that Bosquet, it seems, had already 
tion the ming ZOb near to the river before his movement was per- 
of Prince ceived. Prince Mentschikoff, with Gortschakoff 
Mentschikof and Kvetzinski at his side, had been standing on 
the Kourgane Hill, watching the advance of the English army, 
and giving bold orders for its reception; but presently he was 
told that a French division was advancing toward the unoccu- 
pied cliff on his extreme left. At first he was so shocked by 
the dislocation which his ideas would have to undergo if his 
left flank were indeed to be turned, that he had no refuge for 
his confusion except in mere disbelief, and he angrily refused 
to give faith to the unwelcome tidings.'' For days he had been 
on the ground which he himself had ‘chosen for the great strug- 
gle; but he was so certain that he had effectually learned its 
character by glancing at its general features, that he had not, 
it seems, had the industry to ride over it, nor even to find out 
the roads by which the villagers were accustomed to ascend 
the heights with their wagons. 

He seemed to have imagined it to be impossible that ground 
so steep as the cliff had appeared to be could be ascended by 
troops at any point westward of the Telegraph Height; but 
when at length he was compelled to know that the French and 
the Turks were marching in force toward the mouth of the 
river, his mind under went. s0 great a revulsion, that, having 
hitherto taken no thought for his left, he now seemed to have 
no care for any other part of the position. In his place, a Gen- 
eral, calm, skillful, and conscious of knowing the ground, might 
have seen the tur ning movement of the Fr ench and the Turks 
with unspeakable joy; but, instead of tranquilly regarding the 
whole field of batile under the new aspect which was given to 


1 Chodasiewicz. 


A80 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


it by this manceuvre, he only labored to see how best he could 
imitate the mistake of his adversary—how best he could shift 
his strength to the distant, unoccupied cliff which was threat- 
ened by Bosquet’s advance. The nature of the ground en- 
abled him to make lateral movements in his line without much 
fear of disturbance from the Allies; and, as soon as he saw that 
His measures. the French were detaching two fifths of their army 
for dealing in order to turn his flank, he wildly determined to 
flank march. engage a portion of his scanty force in a march 
from his right hand to his left—in a march which would take 
him far to the westward of his chosen ground. For this pur- 
pose he snatched two light batteries from his centre and his 
right, gave orders that he was to be followed by the four 
‘Moscow’ battalions which were the reserve of his left wing, 
and by the three ‘ Minsk’ battalions which formed part of his 
‘Great Reserves,’ and then, with some squadrons of hussars, 
rode off toward the sea. 

It was certain that a long time would elapse before the 
Mentschikofe troops engaged in this vain journey could be ex- 
on the cliff. —_ pected to get into action with Bosquet; and mean- 
while the power of the whole force engaged in the flank move- 
ment was neutralized. But that was not all. Prince Ments- 
chikoff’s mind was so strangely subverted by the sensation of 
having his left turned, that, although it must needs be a long 
time before he could be in force on the West Cliff, he could. 
not endure to be personally absent from the ground to which — 
he now fastened his thoughts. So when, with his Staff and 
the horsemen of his escort, he had got to the ground overlook- 
ing the sea, near the village of Ulukul Tiouets, and had seen 
the first groups of the Zouaves peering up on the crest of the 
hill, he still remained where he was. Whilst he sat in his sad- 
dle, the appearance of his escort drew fire from the shipping, 
and four of his suite were struck down. But the Prince would 
not move. It is likely that the fire assuaged the pain of his 
thoughts. 

At this time, it would seem, he gave either no orders, or 
Hisbatteriesat None of a kind supplying real guidance for his gen- 
length coming grals, Lingering upon the ground, without troops 


sins 6 tarmon- at hand, he impotently watched the progress of 
pears Autemarre’s brigade. His light batteries soon 
artillery. came up; but neither these, nor the squadrons of 
hussars which formed his escort, were the best of implements 
for pushing back General Bosquet into the steep mountain 
road by which he had ascended; and, in the hands of Prince - 


Mentschikoff, they were simply powerless. However, his guns, 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 481 


when they came up, were placed in battery, and, Bosquet’s 
guns being now on the plateau, there began a cannonade at 
long range between the twelve guns of the French and the 
whole of the light artillery which Prince Mentschikoff had hur- 
ried into this part of the field. At the same time the French 
artillery drew some shots from the distant guns which Kiria- 
koff had placed looking seaward on the Telegraph Height; 
Bosquet main- 2nd the annals of the French artillery record with 
tains himself’ pyide that the twelve pieces which Bosquet brought 
up with him engaged and overpowered no less than forty of 
the enemy’s guns. Nor is this statement altogether without 
something like a basis of truth, for the Russians had now thir- 
ty-six pieces of artillery on the West Cliff, or the Telegraph 
Height ; and, though most of them at this time were so placed 
that their gunners could attempt some shots at a more or less 
long range against Bosquet’s guns, the French artillerymen 
not only held their ground without having a gun disabled, but 
soon eee forward their batteries to a more commanding 
part of the plateau. 

By this time the seven battalions of infantry which Prince 
Mentschikoff had been moving flankwise were very near to the 
spot where their General had been eagerly awaiting them; 
but, just as he was about to have these troops in hand, the 
Prince seems to have come to the conclusion that, after all, he 
could do nothing in the part of the field to which he had drag- 
ged them. He was brought, perhaps, to this belief by seeing 
that the French and the Turks, who had been crossing the 
river at its mouth, were now beginning to show their strength 
toward the westernmost part of the cliff, for he may not have 
known.that this force, being without artillery, could be easily 
prevented from advancing’; against his batteries on the open 
Seeniaehitog Plateau. --At all events, Prince Mentschikoff now 
counter- thought it necessary to reverse his flank movement, 
marching. and to travel back toward his centre with all the 
forces which he had brought from thence to his left. 

Byt, when the Prince began this last counter-movement, he 
was already beginning to fall under the dominion of events in 
another part of the field. 

Bosquet now stood undisturbed on the part of the plateau 
Position of Which he had reached. But he was not without 
Boeauiston-the grounds for deep anxiety. It did not fall to his lot 

on that day to be engaged in any conflict except 
with the enemy’s artillery ; but, from the moment when he be- 
gan to establish himself on the plateau until toward the close 


of the action, he was in a dangerously isolated position ; for he 
Vou. L—X 


482 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA,  [Cuar. XLIV. 


had no troops around him except Autemarre’s brigade, and, 
until the action was near its end, he got no effective support 
either from Bouat on his right or from Canrobert on his left. 


XIV. 

As soon as Marshal St. Arnaud perceived that Bosquet 
would be able to gain the summit of the cliff, he tried to give 
him the support toward his left which his position, when he 
got established on the cliff, would deeply need; and he de- 
termined that the time was come’ for the immediate advance 
St Arnaud or. Cf his Ist and 3rd Divisions. Addressing General 

A: é or- 1 . e fe 
dersthead- Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, and giving them 
vance of Can- the signal for the attack, he said, I am told, these 
Prince Napo- words: ‘With men such as you I have no orders 
eon ‘to give. I have but to point to the enemy!”! 
Hitherto these two French Divisions had been nearly in the 
same alignment as the leading divisions of the English army ; 
The order into DUt now that they were ordered forward, leaving 
whieh fe Ae: the English army still halted, the true character of 

* the movement to be undertaken by the Allies was 
for the first time developed. Their array was to be what 
strategists call ‘an order of battle in three échelons by the 
‘right, the first échelon making a turning movement.” 


Russian Army. . 


ei RS Cab a ae 


+ 


English Army. 3 


P. Napoleon 
Canrobert 


This disposition for the attack was not tbe result of any agree- 
Lord Raglan’s’s Ment made in words between Marshal St. Arnaud 


conception of 4 5 ‘ 
theparthehaa 20d Lord Raglan. It resulted almost naturally, if 


to take. so one may speak, from Bosquet’s turning move-— 
ment, from the extent of the front which the enemy was now . 
seen to present, and from the character of the ground. Just 


1 T have this from an officer who assures me that he heard the words. 

2 “Un ordre de bataille a trois échelons par la droite, le premier échelon 
‘attaquant par le flanc.’ These are the words in which a staff officer pres- 
ent in the action, and very high in the French service, has described to me 
the advance of the Allies. See the diagram, a much better guide than mere 
words. 


Cuap. XLIV. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 483 


as the Marshal had kept back his 1st and 3rd Divisions till he 
saw that Bosquet could gain the height, so Lord Raglan, ac- 
cording to his conception at this time, had to see whether 
Canrobert and Prince Napoleon could establish themselves 
upon the Telegraph Height, before he endangered the conti- 
nuity of the order of battle by allowing the English army to 
advance. 

During the first forty minutes of the cannonade directed 
against the English infantry there had been no corresponding 
fire upon the French from the Telegraph Height ; because the 
Artillery con- GUNS in that part of the field had been placed at 
test between first so low down on the hill-side that no use could 
the Russian : 
andthe French be made of them, and the process of moving them 
batteries. ‘to higher ground. was tedious; but when Kiriakoff 
had at length established a couple of batteries upon the high 
ground near the Telegraph,! the fire of those guns, passing 
over the heads of the Taroutine and the militia battalions, be- 
gan to molest the divisions which were led by Canrobert and 
Prince Napoleon. 

On the other hand, the artillery belonging to the divisions 
of Canrobert and Prince Napoleon came down to a convenient 
ground above the edge of the vineyards, and opened fire upon 
the columns of the ‘militia’ battalions, now posted much far- 
ther up than before on the opposite height. And with effect: 
for although the range did not admit of great slaughter, some 
men were struck, and the rest, though they did not yet move, 
began to be displeased with the ground on which they stood.? 

The swarms of skirmishers which the French threw forward 
went briskly into the cover, forded the river, and then made 
themselves at home in the broken ground at the foot of the 
Telegraph Height. When the soldier is upon service of this 
kind, his natural character —neutralized in general by organi- 
zation—is often seen to reassert itself. One man, prying eager- 
ly forward, would labor to get shots at Russian sharpshooters 
still lingering near the river; another would sit down, take 
out his little store of food and drink, and be glad to engage 
with any one who passed him in something like cynical talk 
concerning the pastime of war. But, upon the whole, French 
skirmishers push on with great boldness and skill. 

When the foremost ranks of Canrobert’s massed battalions 
Canrobers ad entered the vineyards, each man got through 
advance across aS best he could, and rapidly crossed the river; and 
Aer: though during part of the advance the troops were 

1 These were the batteries before spoken of as those from which shots at 
long range were attempted against Bosquet’s artillery. * Chodasiewicz. 


484 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


under the fire of the guns on the Telegraph Height, yet the 
His troopsare Nature of the acclivity before them was of such a 
sheltered from Jind that the farther they advanced (provided the 
Bente of heads of the battalions did not show themselves on 
the hillside. the plateau above the broken ground) the better 
they were covered from fire. And, except some lingering 
skirmishers, they had no infantry opposed to them at this 
time; for the two ‘Moscow’ battalions which Kiriakoff had 
sent down toward the ford of the White Homestead were 
now, 1t seems, made to take part in the marches and counter- 
marches which Mentschikoff was directing in person, and there 
were then no other Russian columns in this part of the field.? 
So, when the head of Canrobert’s Division gained the broken 
ground on the Russian side of the river, it was for the mo- 
ment sheltered ; but if it had then ascended above the broken 
ground so as to peer up over the crest, and face the open pla- 
teau at the top, it would not only have come under the fire of 
artillery, but would have before it the four battalions of mili- 
tiamen, supported by the four Taroutine battalions. 

For an army advancing to the attack, a rim of sheltered 
ground on the verge of the enemy’s position is of infinite use, 
because it enables the assailants to make without hurry their 
final arrangements for the assault; but to troops which are not 
propelled by the decisive order of some resolute commander, 
such shelter as that is sometimes a snare, because it tempts 
Duty attach- men to hang back. In such a situation, the best 


ing upon the 


commander of troops will often abstain from going forward of 


te eo piv. thelr own accord, for it seems to officers and men 
sion. that if they are to quit good shelter and go out into 


storm, they ought, at least, to know that the movement is one 
really intended, and is needful to the purpose of the battle. 
The duty of pressing forward to terminate the isolation of 
Bosquet rested primarily with the general of the 1st Division. 

General Canrobert was a man of whom great hopes were 
General Gan- entertained. According to every test which could 
FOnSEe be applied by school and college examinations, he 


’ There is some ground for supposing that the second ‘ Moscow’ battalion 
was for a while forgotten, and that, not receiving in due time the order to 
rejoin the other battalions of the corps, it was left alone in the ravine till it 
found itself opposed to Canrobert’s whole Division. If this is the case, and 
if there resulted any thing which could be called a combat between the Rus- 
sian battalion and the French Division, the statement that Canrobert was not 
met by any troops except skirmishers would have to be qualified. The statc- 
ment of Chodasiewicz on this point receives no support from Kiriakoff, and 
that is the reason why I have not adopted it. Chodasiewicz did not belong 
to the ‘Moscow’ corps. 


Cuap. XLIV. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 485 


promised to be an accomplished general. To the military stud- 
ies of his youth he had added the experience of many cam- 
paigns in Africa; and even in the French army, where brave 
men abound, his personal valor had become a subject of re- 
mark. He was so deeply trusted by his Emperor that he had 
become the bearer of a then secret paper which was to put 
him at the head of the French army in the event of St. Ar- 
naud’s death. He had the misfortune to have upon his hands 
the blood of the Parisians slain by his brigade on the 4th of 
December; but it was said—to his honor—that he, more than 
all the other generals employed at that time, had loathed the 
work of having to abet the midnight seizure of his country’s 
foremost generals. His spirit, they say, had been broken by 
the pestilence which, some few weeks before, had come upon 
his Division in the country of the Danube; but the extremity 
of the grief to which he then gave way had so much to justify 
it in the appalling nature of the calamity which slew his troops, 
that it was not a conclusive proof of his being wanting in mili- 
tary composure. The most successful of respondents to school 
and college questions now had to undergo a new test. Com- 
manding a fine French division, he had the head of his column 
close under a height occupied by the enemy, and this at a time 
when the isolated condition of a French brigade on his right 
seemed to make it a business of great moment for him to be 
able to bring support to his comrades. 

But at the point where Canrobert faced the height, he found 
it impracticable to drag up artillery, and he was obliged to 
send his guns all the way down to the village of Almatamack, 
in order that they might there ford the river and ascend to the 
top of the plateau by the road which Bosquet had taken. This 
Unable to get Operation could not but take a long time; and what 
eetete a! Canrobert was now called upon to determine was, 
willing to ad- whether he would wait until his artillery had com- 
ic upon open pleted its circuitous and difficult journey, or at once 
ground. carry forward his infantry to the summit of the pla- 
teau, and engage the battalions there posted. He determined 
to wait. The maxims of the French army discourage the idea 
of bringing infantry into action upon open ground without the 
support of artillery; and Canrobert did not, it seems, conceive 
that the predicament in which Bosquet stood was a circum- 
stance which dispensed him from the observance of a general 
rule. So, whilst he was thus waiting for his artillery, he did 
not deem it right to push forward his battalions on the open 
He posts nis Plateau, but he brought the head of his Division to 
battalions on a point high up on the steep, broken side of the hill, 


486 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Cav. XLIV. 


thehigher 2nd extended it, in single and double battalion col- 
steeps of the ummns, on either side of the track by which he had 
Meee eibes ascended. He spread himself more toward his left 
under the pla- than toward his right, and did not move any of his 

battalions in such a way as to be able to give a 
hand to Bosquet. 

The bulk of Prince Napoleon’s Division hung back in the val- 
Hesinea Nope st ley, and the bulk of it at this time was still on the 
stilonthe | north bank of the river. 

the akof Although the head of Canrobert’s Division, being 
Fire sustained under the heights on the Russian side of the riv- 
ere eae er, was enjoying good shelter, the masses of troops 
aqarecnol ioe which stood more toward the rear, including some 
to have shelter Of Canrobert’s battalions and the great bulk of 
fam the hil- Prince Napoleon’s Division, were exposed to the 
Discourage. ‘fire of the guns on the Telegraph Height. They 
ment. suffered ; and a feeling of discouragement began to 
spread. 

Marshal St. Arnaud had understood the gravity of the dan- 
ger which would result from any delay in the advance of his 
centre; but, to meet it, he used an ill-chosen safeguard. The 
way to send help to Bosquet was to give Canrobert due war- 
rant to move up at once upon the plateau, whether with or 
without his artillery... What the Marshal did, however, was 
St.Ammana _ tO order up his reserves, sending one brigade of his 
vashige’ie watd 4th Division to follow the march of Bosquet, and 

‘the other to support Canrobert. This last measure 
was actually a source of weakness rather than of strength, for, 
as far as numbers were concerned, Canrobert and Prince Na- 
poleon were already in more than ample strength. With two 
superb divisions, numbering some 15,000 men, and having Bos- 
quet and Bouat on their right with many thousands more, they 
were advancing upon a very narrow front; and the bringing 
The ill effect of up of fresh troops augmented the masses who came 
tothe "® under the fire of the guns without at all propelling 
French troops. the leading divisions. So the evil lasted and in- 
creased. Inaction in the midst of a battle is hateful to the 
brave, impetuous Frenchman, and inaction under fire is intol- 
erable to him. The troops toward the rear of the columns, 


not having the close presence of the enemy to animate them, | 


1 Tf the objection to advancing on the plateau without artillery was, ac- 
cording to French ideas, insuperable, an effort, one would think, should have 
been made to push forward Prince Napoleon’s Division. Prince Napoleon 
had in his front two roads leading up to the Telegraph, and one of these at 
the least was practicable (and was afterward used) for artillery. 


CuAp. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 484 


and being without that shelter from the Russian guns which 
was enjoyed by the leading battalions, became discontented 
Theircom- and uneasy. It was then that there sprang up 
Heywersbeing “Mong the French tr oops the ill-omened complaint 
‘massacred.’ that they were being ‘ massacred.’ 

_ All this while, Bosquet was on the summit of the cliff with 
Anxiety on ac. Dis one brigade, and his isolation, as we shall pres- 
count of Bos- ently see, was becoming a source of great anx- 
quet. iety. 

Minute after minute aids-de-camp were coming to Lord 
Stite ofthe  taglan with these gloomy tidings; and, in truth, 
battle at this the action was going on ill for the Allies. The 
ceist duty of crowning the West Cliff had been fulfilled 
with great spirit and dispatch by a small body of men; but 
the step had not been followed up. Bouat, filing slowly round 
near the sea with some 9000 men, but without guns, was, for 
the time, annulled. Bosquet, with one brigade, stood halted 
upon the heights which he had climbed; and, though happily 
he had not been assailed by infantry, his advanced and isolated 
position had become a source of weakness to the Allies. Of 
the two French divisions, charged with the duty of attacking 
the front and western flank of the Telegraph Hill, the one had 
its foremost battalions high up the steep, and on the verge of 
the open ground at its top, whilst the other was all down in 
the valley; but (although in different ways, and for different 
reasons) these divisions were both hanging back; and no 
French force had hitherto attacked any part of the ground 
held by the enemy’s formed battalions. Meanwhile the bat- 
teries still swept the smooth approach to the table-land where 
the Telegraph stood, and not only kept it free of all assailants, 
but, pouring their fire over the heads of their own soldiery, 
were able to throw plunging shots into the midst. of Prince ° 
Napoleon’s Division. 

All this while the Enelish army had been kept under the 
fire of the Russian artillery; and although the men had been 
ordered to lie down, the ground sloping toward the river yield- 
ed no shelter, and many had been killed and wounded. 

At first our batteries replied ; but, after a while, it had been 
ascertained that the advantage the enemy had in his command- 
ing ground was too great to be overcome, and the English ar- 
tillery had ceased to fire. Lord Raglan asked why this was: 
‘I observe,’ said he, ‘the enemy’s six-pounders amongst us; 
‘why can not we send our nine-pounders amongst them ?’ 
But he was told that our fire had proved to be ineffectual, and 
that it was, therefore, discontinued. He seemed struck. Per: 


488 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. (Cuap. XLIV. 


haps the answer which he had received became one of the 
grounds on which, a few minutes later, he resolved to change 
the face of the batile. . 


XV. 

For some time the course of the action had been offering to 
Opportunities the Russian General an opportunity of striking a 
offered to great blow; and, circumstanced as he was, it would 
Mentsehikof. Tave been easier for him to gain a signal victory 
before three o’clock than to stand on the defensive and hold 
his ground till sunset. The English forces, confronting, as 
they did, a position of great natural strength, and having their 
left on ground as open as a race-course, would have been ham- 
pered in every attempt to storm the Great Redoubt if their 
flank had been assiduously threatened, and now and then 
charged by the enemy’s powerful cavalry. Therefore, if 
Mentschikoff, checking the English forces by a vigorous use 
of his horsemen, had undertaken, at this time, such an advance 
against Canrobert’s Division as was afterward successfully ex- 
ecuted by Kiriakoff, he would have found the French battal- 
ions quite soft to his touch, by reason of their want of artille- 
ry ;' and Canrobert’s retreat from the verge of the plateau 
would have occurred at a time when half the French army was 
so far from the true scene of conflict as to be unable to give 
the least help. Except by reckoning broadly upon the quality 
of the French and the British troops, or else upon the smiles 
of fortune, it is hard to see how the Allies could then have es- 
caped a disaster. 

But men move so blindly in the complex business of war 
that often, very often, it is the enemy himself who is the best 
repairer of their faults. 

It was so that day. During the precious hour in which the 
Russian forces might have wrought a way to great glory, their 
cavalry were suffered to remain in idleness, and the battalions 
which formed the instrument afterward used for striking the 
blow were marching in vain from east to west and from west 
to east. The torpor and the false moves of the enemy coun- 
tervailed the shortcomings of the Allies. 

No combat of any moment was going on at this time. It 
The battle, at iS true that Major Norcott, with the left wing of 
this time,lan- the 2nd battalion of the Rifle Brigade, had gone 
Sy iis into the vineyards in front of our Light Division, 
and by this time he had not only driven the enemy’s riflemen 


'T should not have ventured upon this sentence if it were not that I am 
warranted in doing so by what actually occurred a little later. See post. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASIQN OF THE CRIMEA. 489 


from the inclosures, but had even stolen over the river higher 
up, and was opening fire on the left bank. But every where 
else the battle flagged. The men of our infantry divisions, 
though they were under the fire of thirty guns, still lay pass- 
ive upon the ground. Our cavalry awaited orders. Our ar- 
tillery declined to fire without being able to strike. The Rus- 
sian and the French artillery continued engaged at long range. 
No French battalion advanced above the broken ground, 
though, covering their front and the left flank of their trailing 
columns, swarms of skirmishers were alive. Of these, some 
were firmg to show where they were, some dueling with the 
Russian riflemen who yet remained in the valley; others as- 
cended the knolls, and vexed any Russians they saw with long, 
careful shots; others, again, sat down, and contentedly took 
their rest. 

This languishing of the battle seemed to promise ill for the 
Allies. They had undertaken to assault the enemy’s left, and 
to that enterprise they stood committed, for they had drawn 
away from the real field of battle to the West Cliff some four- 
teen thousand men. Yet, since the moment when Bosquet 
began to ascend the cliff, more than forty minutes had elapsed, 
and nothing had yet been done to win a result from his move- 
ment, nor even to give him that support which he very griev- 
ously wanted. Both from Bouat on his right, and from Can- 
robert on his left, he was divided by a wide tract of ground. 

Hitherto, then, the operations planned and undertaken by 
the French had not only done nothing toward carrying the 
position, but had even brought the Allies into danger. 

The causes of the miscarriage were the physical obstructions 
Causes which Which hindered both Bounat and Canrobert from 
had oceasion- bringing up their guns with them, and the stiffness 
ed the failure : : . 
ofthe French Of the objection which prevents French generals 
operations. = from engaging their infantry on open ground with- 
out the support of artillery. According to the intended plan 
of operations, Bosquet, after gaining the cliff with his whole 
column of some 14,000 men, was to bring round. his right 
shoulder in order to fall upon the flank of the Russians, and 
simultaneously with his appearance on the plateau a vigorous 
and resolute onslaught was to be made by the rest of the 
French army upon the front of the enemy’s leit wing. But 
Bosquet, as we saw, though he was personally present on the 
part. of the plateau overhanging Almatamack, had only one 
‘brigade there, and whether he looked to Bouat on his right 
or to Canrobert on his left, he looked in either case to a gen- 
eral who, though he had masses of infantry, was without artil- 

» 2 


490 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cmar. XLIV, 


lery, and he therefore looked in vain. In such circumstances, 
- the utmost that Bosquet could be expected to do was to hold 
his ground, and this he did. 


XVI. 

For an hour and a half the Allies had lain under fire, without 
even beginning to assail the enemy’s formed battalions. The 
only ground gained was that occupied by Bosquet. But Bos- 
quet’s achievement not having been followed up, his very sue- 
cess now threatened to bring disaster upon the Allies. When 
a French soldier is one of a body placed in a false position, he 
knows it, and comments on the fact; and the very force and 
vivacity of his nature make it difficult to keep him long upon 
ground to which he feels a scientific objection. A French 
Adespondine 2d-de-camp came in haste to Lord Raglan, and 

sponding 4 

account of | represented that unless something could be done to 
FreAnees o07 support or relieve Bosquet’s column it would be 
BEM iN Fit COLE omised.’ Gifted himself with the command 

5 of graceful diction, Lord Raglan was not without 
fastidious prejudices against particular forms of expression, 
and it chanced that he bore a singular hatred against the 
French word which we translate into ‘compromised.’ So he 
archly resolved to have the meaning of the word fully ex- 
panded into plain French, and he asked the aid-de-camp what 
would be the actual effect upon the bapgade of its being ‘ com- 

‘promised.’ 

The answer was, ‘It will retreat.’? 

Was it time for the English General to take the battle into 
his own hands ? 

So long as Bosquet, with Autemarre’s brigade, stood isola- 
ted upon the cliff, and Canrobert’s and Prince Napoleon’ s Divi- 
sions remained hanging back in the vineyards and the broken 
ground below the Telegraph Height, an advance of our forces 
would plainly distort the Allied line in a hazardous way, and 
Lord Raglan had watched for the moment when the develop- 
ment of the expected French attack on the Telegraph Height 
would warrant him in suffering our infantry to go forward. 

But he had hitherto watched in vain; and, not knowing how 
Lord Raglan long the causes of the French delay might continue 
tinitate thang, 0 operate, he resolved to depart from the scheme 
vance of the Of action which had hitherto governed him, and to 
"English army. precipitate the advance of the English forces. It 
is true that whilst Bosquet stood halted on the cliff, whilst 


1“ Battra en retraite.” 


Cap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 491 


Canrobert abstained from assailing the Telegraph Height, and 
whilst Prince Napoleon’s Division was still low down in the 
valley, the advance of the English forces against the Cause- 
way and the Kourgané Hill would ruin the symmetry of the 
plan which the French had contrived; and if Bosquet should 
be obliged to retreat at a time when the English were hotly 
engaged in an attack upon the enemy’s heights, the whole ar- 
ray of the Allies would be br ought into peril. But the timely 
incurring of dangers is proper to the business of war; and, 
Grounds tend- though the enemy had hitherto been torpid and in- 
aia ta dulgent, the cause of the Allies had fallen into such 
resolve. a plight that a remedy which involved heavy risks 
might nevertheless be the right one. And, so far as concerned 
his understanding with the French, Lord Raglan was freed 
from all care; for he had been already assured that Marshal 
St. Arnaud anxiously desired him to advance, and one aid-de- 
camp, as we have seen, had told him plainly that nothing less 
than a diversion by the English forces would prevent General 
Bosquet from retreating. 

A man may weigh reasons against reasons, but sometimes, 
after all, it is the power of the imagination, or else some manly 
passion, which comes to strike the balance and lead him on to 
action. The inotive of which Lord Raglan felt the most con- 
scious was the simple and natural longing to cease from being 
passive. He could no longer endure to see our soldiery lying 
down without resistance under the enemy’s fire.! 

He had’ been riding slowly upon the ground between the 
Orders for the Great Causeway and the left of the French army* 
ankin © but he now stopped his horse, and the cavalcade 
fantry. which had trailed in his wake whilst he moved then 
gathered more closely around him. There were altogether 
some twenty horsemen; and although with several of them 
Lord Raglan from time to time talked gayly, yet, so far as con 
cerned the duty of taking thought how best to conduct the ac 
tion, he was like a man riding in mere solitude, for it was not 
his custom to seek counsel, and the men around him so held 
their chief in honor that none of them would have liked to as- 
sail him with question or advice. Still, any one there could 
see that, besides Lord Raglan himself, there was one man of 
the Head- Quarter Staff whose mind was engaged in the busi- 
ness of the hour. We saw that Airey had already begun to 
wield great power in the English army. With the power was 
its burden. Whilst most of the other men on the Head-Quar- 

.' This is the motive for accelerating the advance of the British troops 
which Lord Raglan avowed to me on the evening of the action. 


492 ‘ INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


ter Staff seemed to be merely spectators or messengers, there 
Was care, vexing care on the lean, eager, imperious features of 
the Quartermaster-General. He was not simply impatient of 
the delay ; he judged it to be a great evil. 

It was to him that Lord Raglan now.spoke some five words. 
Whatever it was that was said, it lit the face of the hearer, 
and turned his look of care into sunshine. The horsemen in 
the surrounding group rose taller in their saddles and handled 
their reins like men whose limbs are braced by the joy of 
passing from expectancy-to action. Every man, whether he 
had heard the words or not, saw in the gladness of his pe ilehas 
bor’s face that the moment long awaited was come. 

Our infantry was to advance. The order flew ; for it was 
Nolan—the impetuous Nolan—who carried it to the 2nd Di- 
vision. A few moments later, and the order had reached the 
Light Division. The whole of the foremost English line, from 
the 47th Regiment on our right to the extreme left of the 
Light Division, rose alert from the ground, dressed well their 

ranks, and then, having a front of two miles with a depth of 
only two men, marched grandly down the slope.' 


XVII. 

Sir De Lacy Evans, commanding the 2nd Division, had be- 
Rane detach, fore ‘him the blazing v illage. In that conflagr ation 
ait kt ro? ee could live, ‘and in order to make good his 
and with the’ advance on either side of the flames, he had split 


rest of his Di- his force by detaching General Adams to his right 
vision ad- 

vances toward With two regiments* and Turner’s battery. With 
the bridge. that foree Adams, driving before him some Russian 
skirmishers, marched down toward the ford which divided the 
French and English armies. Evans himself, with four battal- 
ions and Fitzmayer’s battery of field artillery, had to assail the 
defenses which Prince Mentschikoff had accumulated for the 
dominion of the Pass and the great road. Soon, however, 
Evans was a good deal strenghtened in the artillery arm; for 
an opportunity of rendering servicé in this part of the field 
was observed and seized by Captain Anderson with a battery 
belonging to the Light Division, and by Colonel Dacres with 
a. battery belonging to the Ist Division. By the time that the 
infantry? had got down to near the inclosures, eighteen English 


Computing from the right of the 47th Regiment, the English front was 
a little short of two miles, but computing it from the ground on which Adams 
vides advancing, the front was more than two miles in extent. 
2 The 41st and 49th. 
3 The Ist brigade, under Pennefather, “tt the 47th Regiment, belonging 
to Adams’s brigade. 


Cuar. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 493 


guns had begun to reply to the fire which the enemy was pour- 
ing upon Pennefather’s brigade. 

But Evans’s task was a hard one; for, having on his right an 
The conflict in LMpassable conflagration, and being cramped to- 
which he be- ward his left by our Light Division, he was forced 
came engaged. +4 move along the unsheltered line of the Great 
Causeway upon a narrow and crowded front, and this under 
a converging fire of ‘artillery; for with the sixteen guns of 
the Causeway batteries, and the flanking fire poured down 
from the left shoulder of the Great Redoubt, the enemy swept 
the main road and the bridge, and searched the fords both 
above and below it. And, whilst the enemy’s batteries thus 
dealt with thé more, open approaches to the bridge, his infantry 
was strong in that part of the ground which could not be 
searched by round shot, for, posted in the covert on either side 
of the Causeway, Prince Mentschikoff had six battalions,’ and 
besides these there was a great portion of the sixteen battal- 
ions posted on the slopes of the Kourgane Hill, which was 
near enough to be available for the defense of the Causeway 
as well as the Great Redoubt. Moreover, the enemy’s reserves 
were so disposed as to be in close and easy communication 
with this part of the field. The Russian skirmishers at this 
time were swarming in the thick ground which belts the 
river.” 

Confronting these defenses, Evans strove to work his way 
forward; but, although the walls and inclosures on the skirts 
of the village here and there formed islands of shelter, the rest 
of the ground which had to be traversed was so bare, that ev- 
ery man of the force, as long as he stood there, came under 
the eyes of the Russian gunners; and their fire being there- 
fore effective, Pennefather’s brigade, though always moving 
forward a little, could only gain ground by degrees. 

At times, when the balls were falling thickly, the men would 
shelter themselves as well as they could behind such little cov- 
er as the ground afforded ; and when there came a lull, they 
would spring forward and find shelter more in advance. There 
were some buildings which afforded good cover against grape 

' Viz., the four battalions of Borodino, the 6th battalion of ‘ riflemen,’ and 
the battalion of sappers and miners. According to some accounts, there 
were only a few companies of the sappers and miners. ‘There is some ob- 
scurity as to the operations of the Borodino corps. They were so placed as to 
become severed from the actual control of their divisional general, and they 


were covered, it seems, by the conflagration; but all accounts agree in stat- 
ing that the Borodino corps was in the Pass and close to the great road. 


2 No less than three out of the above six battalions were thrown out as. ~ 


skirmishers. 


494 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuar. XLIV. 


and musketry, and some of the men, having gained this shelter 
by a swift rush across the open ground under very heavy fire, 
were slow to move out again into a storm of grape, canister, 
and musket balls. At a later time the enemy shattered the 
walls of these buildings with round shot, and some of our men 
were crushed or suffocated by the ruins. But those who died 
that poor death were men hanging back. 

This kind of struggle did not, of course, allow the troops to 
adhere to their order of formation; but whenever any number 
of men got together upon gr ound which enabled them to ex- 
tend, they quickly fell into line. And this they did notwith- 
standing that the groups thus instinctively hastening into their 
English. formation were sometimes men of different regimental 
Several times the men were ordered to lie down. 

The 47th Regiment, pushing in between the river and the 
burning village, and afterward fording the stream a good way 
below the bridge, was better sheltered from the fire of the 
Causeway batteries than the regiments of Pennefather’s brig- 
ade. 

Colonel Stacy, of the 30th, persistently worked his men 
through the gardens and inclosures till at length he was able 
to cross the river and establish his regiment under cover of the 
steep bank on the Russian side of the stream. Thence for 
some time he maintained a steady fire against the gunners of 
the Causeway batteries. 

The 95th, like the other regiments of the brigade, stole for- 
ward from one sheltering spot to another, and at one time three 
of its companies got divided from the rest of the corps, and 
united themselves in line with the 55th; but the whole regi- 
ment had been again got together when, the Light Division 
coming on, it appeared that its right regiment was overlapped 
by the 95th. Lacy Yea did not choose to stop, and, the 95th 
being halted at the time, he, with his 7th Fusileers, passed 
through it. But the ‘Derbies’ could not endure to be thus 
left behind, and soon the regiment rushed forward, bearing so 
strongly toward the left, that the fortunes of the corps thence- 
forth became connected with the exploits of Hodnneton 
brigade. 

The 55th Regiment, whilst advancing in line over open 
ground, came under so er ushing a fire that it staggered; and 
though the line did not fall back, it was broken. But Colonel 
Warren soon rallied his regiment, and carried it forward. Af- 
terward, when he reached a spot which yielded shelter to a man 
lying flat on the ground, he ordered his men to lie down, but 
he himself kept his saddle and remained steadfast in the centre 


Cuap. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 495 


of his regiment until the moment came when again he could 
lead it forward. 

The kind of struggle in which Evans was engaged could not 
be long maintained without involving heavy loss. Major Rose, 
and Captain Schane, and Lieutenant Luxmore, were killed. 
Evans himself received a severe contusion, and almost all his 
staff were struck; for Percy Herbert, his Assistant Quarter- 
master-General, was dangerously hit, and Captain Thompson, 
Ensign St. Clair, and Captain A. M. McDonald were sever ely 
wounded. Of the officers of the 30th, 55th, and 47th regiments, 
Major Rose, Captain Schane, and Lieutenant Luxmore were 
killed. Colonel Warren was wounded, and so were Paken- 
ham, Dickson, Conolly, Whimper, Walker, Coats, Bisset, Arm- 
strong, Lieutenants Warren, Woollcombe, Philips, and May- 
cock. Pennefather’s brigade alone lost in killed and wounded 
nearly one fourth of its str ength.! 

So long as the Causeway batteries swept the mouth of the 
Pass, Evans, with his three shattered battalions,? could do no 
more than maintain an obstinate and bloody combat in this 
part of the field, and gain ground by slow degrees. He was 
not yet able to push forward beyond the left bank of the river, 
and assail the enemy in the heart of his position across the 
great road. 


XVIII. 

On Evans’s left, but entangled with some of his regiments, 
Advance of the SIT Geor ge Brown moved forward with the Light 
Light Division. Division. He had before him the Great Redoubt, 
armed with fourteen guns of heavy calibre, and this strong- 
hold was. flanked on the one side by the Lesser Redoubt with 
its eight guns, and on the other by the artillery and the infan- 
try which guarded the Pass. Upon the slopes of the Kour- 
The taskit  gane Hill, and so posted as to look down into the 
had before it. Great Redoubt, there was a battery of field artille- 
ry, and in rear of this a battery and a half, besides the four 
guns of the sailors, were held in reserve.? 

‘Sixteen battalions of infantry* were posted upon the flanks 
or in the immediate rear of the Great Redoubt. Of this force, 
the four Kazan battalions, formed in two columns of attack, 


1 This, as well as all other statements which I make of casualties in the 
English army, is taken from the official returns. 

2 The 30th, 55th, and 47th Regiments. As to the 95th, see post. 

* The details of these forces have been given already. 

4 The four Kazan, or Archduke Michael’s, battalions, the four Vladimir 
battalions, the four Sousdal battalions, and the four Ouglitz battalions. 


496 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuap. XLIV. 


stood in front near to either shoulder of the Great Redoubt, 
and these were supported by the four battalions of the Vladi- 
mir corps. On the right—proper right—of these troops, but 
somewhat refused, there were two of the Sousdal battalions: 
more in advance, and so placed as to form the extreme right 
of the Russian infantry line, there were the two remaining bat- 
talions of the same corps. Besides the masses thus pushed 
forward, General Kvetzinski held in hand the four battalions 
of the Ouglitz corps as an immediate reserve, and posted them 
upon the higher slopes of the Kourgané Hill. Farther toward » 
the rear (except, perhaps, whilst they were employed as skir- 
mishers) there were placed the two battalions of sailors. On 
the extreme right, and massed in columns at intervals upon the 
eastern and southeastern slopes of the Kourgané Hill, there 
were the bulk of the Russian cavalry.1 This force of horsemen 
was so placed that, whilst it covered the right and the right 
rear of the position, the Russian commander could, so to speak, 
swing it round, and hurl it against the flank of an enemy assail- 
ing his Great Redoubt. In few words, that Kourgané Hill, 
now about to be assailed by our Light Division, was defended 
by two redoubts, by forty-two guns, and by a force of some 
17,000 men. 

Again, the troops which defended the Causeway could aid 
the defense of the Kourgané Hill, and, moreover, the troops 
which Prince Mentschikoff called his ‘ Great Reserve,’ were so 
placed that they might be regarded as operating in support of 
the troops in this part of the field. 

It rested with the four Kazan battalions to make the first 
attack upon the English troops. This was to be done whilst 
our soldiery, after struggling through the fords, were gaining 
the top of the bank. ‘The enemy’s massive columns were to 
throw our men back into the channel of the river before they 
could find time to form. 

The slope which led up from the top of the bank to the par- 
apet of the Great Redoubt was almost as even as the glacis of 
a fortress; and, except to one who knew beforehand how un- 
accountably life and limb are spared in a storm of artillery fire, 
it seemed hard to understand that upon that smooth ground 
men would be able to live for many moments under round shot, . 
grape, and canister from fourteen heavy guns. 

«Being on the extreme left of the Allied forces, Sir G. Brown 
had to stand prepared for an attack of cavalry on his flank. 
On our side of the river, home down to the edge of the vine- 


1 The whole of it, except the squadrons which Prince Mentschikoff took 
with him when he rode toward the sea. 


Cnar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 497 


yards, the broad and gently undulating downs, thickly clothed 
with elastic herbage, were all that horsemen could wish for, 
and even on the left bank, the ground in this part of the field 
was practicable for the evolutions of cavalry. Hardly ever in 
war did 3000 troopers sit still in their saddles under stronger 
provocation to enterprise, for they were upon fair ground, they 
were confronted by a body of horse which was in numbers but 
one third of their strength, and they gazed upon the naked flank 
of an infantry force advancing to the attack of a strong position. 
Therefore, the contingency which actually occurred—the con- 
tingency of the enemy’s withholding his cavalry arm instead 
of lifting it against the open flank of the Allies, could not have 
been looked for beforehand, and can only be accounted for now 
by ascribing it to the eccentric forbearance of the Russian com- 
mander.! . 

Rightly, therefore—though the apprehension was not after- 
ward justified by the event—the Light Division was carried 
into action with an idea that cavalry charges were to be ex- 
pected on the flank; and the duty of preparing against enter- 
prises of this sort pressed specially upon General Buller, be- 
cause he commanded the left brigade. 

To storm a position thus held in strength by forces of all 
arms, and to answer at the same time for the safety ofthe whole 
of the Allied army against a flank attack, was a task of great 
moment; but, on the other hand, Sir George Brown was not 
Means for pre- Without means for preparing a well-ordered assault, 
paring a well. for the enemy was making no attempt to hold the 
orderedassault _. : ° : 
were opento Vineyards in strength, and on the Russian side of 
theassailants. the river, the bank, though very steep, and from 
eight to fifteen feet in height, was yet so broken, that a skirm- 
isher seeking to bring his eye and his rifle to a level with the 
summit, would easily find a ledge for his foot. Here, then, was 
exactly the kind of cover which the assailants needed, for if this 
steep bank could be seized and lined for a few minutes by their 
skirmishers, it would enable their main body to recover its for- 
mation after passing through the inclosures and fording the 
river. But, in order to lay hold of the advantage thus offered 
by the nature of the ground, it was of necessity to take care that 
The Division the advance of the Light Division should be amply 
not covered by covered by skirmishers. This was not done. The 
skitmishers. _ yifles under Norcott had long before scoured the 


1 Before the action there was a good deal of conversation amongst officers 
in the Light Division with respect to the way in which the expected charges 
of the Russian cavalry should be met, and it was then—then, perhaps, for the 
first time—that the idea of receiving the enemy’s horse in line was broached.. 


Oe oe Vw 


498 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Crar. XLIV. 


vineyards; but they had swerved away toward their left, and, 
fording the river higher up, had left Codrington’s brigade with- 
out any skirmishers to cover its advance. No other light in- 
fantry men were thrown forward in their stead, and the whole 
body went stark on, with bare front, driving full at the ene- 
my’s stronghold. 


XIX. 

Sir George Brown’s right brigade, consisting ofthe 7th Fu- 
The tenor of sileers, the 33rd and the 23rd Regiments,! was un- 
Gahan te der General Codrigton. The left brigade, consist: 
advance. ing of the 19th, the 88th, and the 77th Regiments, 
was commanded by General Buller.. The orders which Gen: 
eral Codrington received from Sir George were simply to ad- 
vance with his brigade, and not to stop until he had crossed 
the river. A like order, it is believed, was given to General 
Buller. The Division still moved in line, and, after losing a 
few men from the fire of the enemy’s artillery, it reached the 
boundary of the vineyards and gardens which belt the course 
of the river. 

In their eagerness for the conflict, the regiments strove to 
The advance Advance quickly; but it was a laborious task to trav- 
through the erse the gardens and inclosures, and many of those 
vineyards, who had hitherto kept their knapsacks here laid 
them down. Inafew minutes the whole of the Light Division 
of infantry, drawing along with it in its impetuous course the 
95th Regiment, had forced a way into the vineyards. There 
our young soldiers found themselves, as they imagined, in a 
thick storm of shot and cannon balls; but it seems that mis- 
siles of war fly crashing so audibly through foliage that they 
sound more dangerous than they are. 

The loss at this time was not great. Our men were in the 
belief that speed was required of them, and having before them 
no chain of skirmishers to feel the way and control the pace 
of the Division, they struggled forward with eager haste. In 
passing from one of the inclosures: to another, part of the line 
came to the top of a vertical bank, revetted with stone, and form- 
ing a kind of ‘sunk fence.’ Standing there, the men observed 
that a violent gust of shot was beating in against the stone 
work at their feet; and it seemed-to them that, the moment 


’ When I speak of several regiments in the same limb of the sentence, I _ 
generally follow. the order in which they would be ranged, going from right 
to left. In a brigade consisting of three regiments, say e.g. of the Ist, 2nd, 
and 8rd Foot, the Ist would be posted at the right, the 2nd at the left, and 
the 3rd in the centre. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 499 


they sprang from the top of the fence to the lower vineyard, 
their legs would be shattered by a thousand missiles. For a 
moment they paused, as though for some guidance; but the 
guidance was such as is given by ‘ Forward! first company !’ 
‘Second company, show them the way! The first who leaped 
down stood unscathed in the vineyard below; the rest fol- 
lowed. Dangers shrink before the advance of resolute men. 
There was not much loss in that lower vineyard. The troops 
pressed on. 

Amongst the vineyards there were here and there farm-cot- 
tages and homesteads; and since the obstructions which the 
men were encountering had destroyed their formation, it be- 
came possible for such as loved their safety more than their 
honor to linger in the shelter afforded by these buildings. 
Some few, they say, lingered. | 

The Division hurried forward with just such trace of its orig- 
andoverthe inal line formation as could remain to it after rap- 
er idly passing through difficult inclosures. The river, 
though flowing in a swift current, was fordable by a strong 
man in most places, but it was of very unequal depth. Gen- 
eral Codrington was seen riding quickly across at a point 
where the stream hardly flowed above his horse’s fetlocks, and 
yet, almost close to him, the taller charger of another officer 
went down and had to swim. The soldiers rapidly waded 
across. Some few perished in the stream, and it was never 
known whether they fell from shot or from not being able to 
keep their footing in the current. 

That part of Pennefather’s brigade which was overlapped 
by the 7th Fusileers! had become entangled with the Light 
Division, and, at the moment of Codrington’s advance, Hume 
of the 95th seized a color, and, dashing across the river, carried 
with him almost the whole of the regiment; but the men bore 
so much toward their left, that by the time they gained the 
foot of the bank on the Russian side of the river they had got 
blended—not (as might be supposed) with the right, but—with 
the left regiment of Codrington’s brigade. They were des- 
tined to share the glory and the carnage which awaited the 
23rd Fusileers. 

At length the whole Light Division, together with the ad- 
ditional regiment which had strayed into its company, was 
upon the Russian side of the river; but as yet the troops only 
stood upon the narrow strip of dry ground at the water’s edge, 
and such of them as were in the centre or toward the right 


t 7.e., after the Fusileers had marched through the 95th. 


ar oe ee 


500 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


were penned back by the rocky bank which rose steep and 
high over their heads. The soldiery were a crowd—a crowd 
shaped and twisted by the winding of the river’s bank, yet 
with some remains ‘of military coherence; for, although the in- 
closures and the fording of the river could not but destroy all 
formation, the men of every company had kept together as 
well as they were able. 

But a general who had omitted to line the bank with his 
Along the part OW skirmishers might well expect to see it fringed 
reached by ~~ with the enemy’s rifles; and the strong wall which 

odrington’s + : a 3 

brigade the Nature had offered to the English as a cover for the 
rit pauk ise formation of their battalions, was now, of course, 
enemy's held by the enemy’s skirmishers. These light troops 
skimmishers. Were in greatest force along the bank which faced 
the centre and the right of the Light Division. They came to 
the edge of the bank, fired down into the crowd of the red- 
coats, and then drew back for a pace or two that they might 
load in peace and be ready to fire again. They could kill and 
wound men in the crowd below without laying) themselves 
open to fire. 

Toward the left of the Light Division the bank was less ab- 
Gate aan ieupt and also more free from the enemy’s skirmish- 
brethren LEN There, after passing the river, General Buller, 

who commanded the 2nd brigade, was able to form 
it at his leisure. He ordered the 77th Regiment to lie down 
under the cover afforded by the configuration of the ground, 
and, upon a slope somewhat shelter ed from the fire of the en- 
emy’s artillery, he placed the 88th Regiment. With these 
two regiments he remained long halted, not partaking im the 
subsequent advance of Codrington’s brigade. His reason was, 
that, a large body of cavalry and infantry appearing on the 
plain to threaten his left, he thought it right to keep two regi- 
ments in hand until he should find himself, supported by the 
near approach of the Highland brigade. He conceived that he 
ought to beware of outstripping the Ist Division by too great 
Nature of the 2 interval; and, in truth, the duty which attach- 
duty attach- ed upon General Buller at this moment was one of 
ing upon him. 9 orave kind; for if the enemy should seize the mo- 
ment of Sir George Brown’s assault upon the Great Redoubt 
as his time for making a resolute attack with horse, foot, and 
artillery, upon the flank of our advancing troops, the safety of 
the whole Allied army would be challenged, and would be 
found to rest upon such dispositions as General Buller might 
have made for covering our left. 


* As to the 19th Regiment, see post. 


Cuapr. XLIV. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 5Ol 


Sir George Brown’s order to Buller empowered him to ad- 
vance until he was over the stream; but, that duty having been 
executed, the brigadier now found himself on the bank of a 
river, without, so far as I know, having any fresh orders to 
guide him, yet charged by circumstance with the duty of cov- 
ering the flank of the whole Allied army at the moment of an 
assault upon the enemy’s strong-hold. The business was a vital 
one; and the caution which Buller used at this time was re- 
quired by the occasion.!. For, to push forward the two regi- 
ments which formed the extreme left of the whole Allied front, 
and to march them against the enemy’s strong-hold in a line, 
outflanked by the enemy’s horse, and even, it would seem, by a 
portion of his foot, would have been to lay open—not Buller’s 
brigade merely, but—the whole Allied army to the risk of a 
flank attack involving great disasters. In these circumstances 
it was Buller’s duty to take up such a position as would enable 
him to cover the advance of Codrington’s brigade and to sus- 
tain the shock of a flank attack. It was to that end that he 
kept in hand the 88th and the 77th Regiments. 


XX. 

Though forming part of Buller’s brigade, the 19th Regiment 
The 19th Regi- Was suffered, ere long, to associate itself with Gen- 
gu, eral Codrington’s advance. So, with this and the 
other stray regiment? which clung to it, Codrington’s brigade 
was swollen to a force of five battalions. 

These five battalions were extended in a broken chain at the 
ve foot of the bank on the Russian side of the river, 
State of the A aa : . 
five battalions and were falling—especially toward the right—un- 
standing one der the close fire of the skirmishers who crowned 
theleftbank thetop. In this strait some of our officers instinct- 
ofthe river. ively tried to clear the front by getting the men to 
mount part way up the bank and bring their rifles to a level 
with the summit. But, among the foremost, the general com- 
manding the Division had forded the river. Sir George Brown 

Sir George was an officer whose career had begun, and begun 
Brown: with glory, in the great days under Wellington ; 
but, whilst he was still in his early manhood, wars had ceased, 
and thenceforth for near forty years he had brought his strong 
_ energies to bear upon the kind of military business which used 
to be practiced by the English in peace-time. A long immer- 


! The way in which the 88th and the 77th Regiments were handled at a 
later period of the action was not the necessary result of the dispositions made 
at this time, and is a fit subject for distinct comments. 

?'The 95th. See ante. 


002 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuapr, XLIV. 


sion in the Adjutant-General’s department had led him to go 
even beyond other men in laying stress upon the value of dis- 
cipline; but the practice of this sort of industry had not at all 
helped to school him for the command of a division in war- 
time; for in laboring after that mechanic perfection which, 
after all, is only one of many means toward an end, the end it- 
self had been much forgotten by those who controlled our mil- 
itary system, and the business of war (as, for instance, the art 
of carrying a brigade in line through inclosures and thick 
grounds) had-been little or never practiced in England! To 
a military system which omits to anticipate and to deal with 
the common obstacles to be expected in a battle-field, war is a 
rough disturber; and, unless the industry of the barrack-yard 
is supported by other and better resources, it is liable to be 
turned to nothingness by even a gentle contact with reality. 
A belt of garden ground, a winding, though fordable stream, 
and an enemy hitherto inert, had sufficed to make Sir George 
Brown despair of being able to present his troops to the ene- 
my in a state of formation. Great dislocation of military or- 
der was, of course, the necessary result of having to pass 
through inclosures and to ford a winding stream; so what the 
main body needed to have before it when it approached the 
left bank of the river was a swarm of skirmishers clearing its 
immediate front, and prepared to cover it during the process 
of forming anew. This cover, however, was wanting. Sir 
George Brown declared that to attempt any formation after 
the passage of the river would be impossible, and that he had 
“‘ determined to trust to the spirit and individual courage of the 
“troops.” Thus, on ground giving rare opportunity for the 
' deliberate preparation of an attack, and under no great stress 
of battle, the Light Division—the ‘‘ Light Division,” whose 
very name carried with it a great inheritance of glory—was 
suffered to lapse into a mere throng of brave men. In this 
plight the five battalions had to advance under the guns of a 
powerful battery supported by heavy columns of foot. 

But an officer honored with the command of British troops 
can always hope that, when his skill fails him, his men may still — 
retrieve the day by sheer fighting; and to a commander frus- 
trated in his evolutions, the prospect of a rude conflict with 
the enemy may offer the best kind of solace, and, perhaps, even — 
a happy issue out of trouble. Of such comfort as was to be 
got from close fighting, there seemed to be fair promise in the 
Great Redoubt, and there Sir George Brown resolved to seek 


1 Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Scinde, used to press the import- 
ance of practicing troops in this way, but withaut success. 


SECTION INTENDED TO CONVEY AN IDEA OF THE FORMATION OF THE GROUND BENEATH THE GREAT REDOUBT. 


the 
Gre oe Redoubt 


N.B.—This is not a-section made from survey, and ts not intended to be taken as a representation that such was the actual config- 
uration of the ground. It is only meant to help the reader toward understanding the description given in the teat. 


504 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. (Cuap. XLIV. 


it. Eager to have, at the least, a forward place in the armed 
throng, he suffered agony lest the bank, very steep at the spot 
where he faced it, should be inaccessible to a mounted officer ; 
but he soon found a place where a break in the stitthhess of the 
acclivity left room for the two or three ledges which a horse- 
man must find before he can reach the top. Then he quickly 
gained the open ground above. The Russian skirmishers were 
there. Schooled in habits of deep reverence for military rank, 
these men may have been startled, perhaps, by the sudden ap- 
parition of the flowing plumes which bespoke a general officer, 
and, what was worse, a general officer in a state of displeasure. 
It seems, too, there is something in the bearmg of a fearless, 
near-sighted man which disturbs the reckonings of other peo- 
ple; for they see that his ways are not their ways, and they 
do not know but that he may be right in not fearing them, 
and that if they were not to be afraid of him, they themselves 
might be in the wrong. At all events, the enemy’s skirmish- 
ers, omitting or failing to bring down the English General, 
suffered him to remain unhurt on the top of the bank. There, 
flushed and angry—he was angry perhaps with himself, or an- 
gry with the gardens and walls, and the perverse winding of a 
stream which had broken the cherished structure of his battal- 
ions—he sat on his gray charger full under the guns of the 
Great Redoubt, and the dun oblong columns of the enemy’s 
infantry that flanked it on either side. However eagerly he 
might be longing to carry forward his Division, he was with- 
out the means of sending swift orders along his line. 

But toward the right of Sir George Brown a movement cor- 
General God- Tesponding with his determination had already be- 
nington, gun. ' General Codrington, ordered to advance in 
line, and not to stop till he had crossed the river, had obeyed 
very swiftly, and the men of his brigade (in common with the 
95th Regiment), having moved with a converging tendency 
during their passage through the vineyards and the river, were 
now thickly clustered under the left bank in a chain which 
took its bends from the winding of the stream. Codrington 
was at this time between the 33rd Regiment and the 23rd Fu- 
sileers. He strove to do something toward restoring the form- 
ation of his troops; but the crowd, jammed together, twisted 
into fantastic shape by the bends of the river’s bank, and, 
standing helpless under the fire of the skirmishers shooting 
down into it from above, could hardly even try to perform an 
evolution requiring free space and time. And if for a moment 
it seemed possible that any approach to a formation under the 
bank could be effected, the hope was rudely destroyed ; for, 


Cnr. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 505 


on ground lower down the river, a body of the enemy’s light 
troops found for themselves a spot yielding them shelter, yet 
so placed that it enabled them to pour a flanking fire along 
the strip or ledge which divided the stream from. the bank, 
and this at a part where the earth was alive with our devoted 
soldiery. 

To keep the men under this fire for many minutes, and to 
keep them, too, standing all the time in unresisting masses, 
would be to lose a brigade. The only order received by Gen- 
eral Codrington had been obeyed to the full. He had no time 
to seek guidance from his divisional general. Clearly there 
was come upon him one of those rare conjunctures in which a 
career is made to hinge upon the decision of a moment. Gen- 
eral Codrington a few weeks before had been only a traveler! 
on a visit to the army in Bulgaria. He now commanded a 
brigade. His father was that admiral whose achievement at 
Navarino had been a link in the chain of events which now 
brought the son in arms for the Sultan’s cause. And any one 
who loved our navy, even to jealousy of the land service, might 
persuade himself that the bright, ardent, straightforward 
glance, and the bold, decisive speech of the Coldstream officer, 
must have come by inheritance from a sailor. He had the 
close, tight lips bespeaking the obstinate man who lives a life 
undistracted by breadth and diversity of views. And much 
of what he seemed he was; a firm, plain soldier, not liable to 
be bent from the simple path by refined or complex views.? 
He could not see far without the help of the glass which he 
kept attached to his cap, but he was more alive to the world 
~ around him than near-sighted men often are. He had never 
before been in action. He could not suffer his troops to re- 
main for another minute a helpless crowd under heavy fire. 
He knew not how he could withdraw them to any ground apt 
for manceuvring, and it was hardly possible for him to exert 
such a control over the crowd of soldiers hemmed in under 
the bank as would enable him to repair the evil by covering 
his brigade with skirmishers. 


XXI. 
Nelson, gliding into the Bay of Aboukir, told his assembled 


1 With the rank of colonel, but unattached. 

2 I of course know that an opinion attributing to General Codrington this 
manly simplicity of mind is liable to be challenged by those who remember 
the style of his dispatches. My answer is, that his dispatches do not indicate 
the man. His private letters do. They are written very simply, but with a 
good deal of power. 


Vorsit—-Y 


506 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


captains that if any one of them in the coming battle should 
chance to be disturbed by doubts about what he ought to do, 
he might find a good way out of trouble by closing with an 
enemy’s ship. 

And it was a solution of this sort which Codrington sought ; 
Codrington re- for, with no authority except that which was cast 
ov eet Re upon him by the stress of the moment, he resolved 
doubt. to storm the Great Redoubt. And he resolved to 
do this instantly. His immediate power over the disordered 
masses around him was confined within the range of his voice, 
but, lifting himself a little in his stirrups, he spoke to the men 
His words to in his clear, ringing voice, and ordered them (all 
‘here who could hear him) ‘to fix bayonets, get up the 
‘bank, and advance to the attack.’ 

Then also Codrington imagined that the need of the mo- 
He gains the Ment was a ready leader rather than a cool and 
top of the placid general. Besides, this was his first battle; 
an and perhaps—our army, and not the world, will un- 
derstand him if so it was—he unconsciously felt that the fore- 
most place was peculiarly befitting a Guardsman who com- 
manded a brigade of the line. With the quickness of a man 
accustomed to hunting, he found a spot where the bank was 
practicable, and, facing it obliquely, his small white Arab, with 
two or three strides, carried him to the summit. From the 
spot which he thus reached the enemy’s skirmishers had with- 
drawn ;! and Codrington, with the few soldiers who had al- 
ready been able to gain the top, was alone upon this part of 
the hill-side. Looking up the smooth, gentle slope, he had be- 
fore him the Great Redoubt ;. but for the moment the mouths 
of the heavy guns which armed it remained black and silent. 
On his right front he saw a body of infantry massed in col- 
umn. The men, in their long, gray, sombre coats, stood form- 
ed with great precision and rigidly still; but right and left of 
the mass there was a chain of skirmishers so placed on the 
flanks of the column as to be abreast of its front rank. The 
troops close in rear of the body in front could hardly be seen, 
for they were almost hidden by the dip of the ground, but the 
crest was fringed with sparkling light, and the light was light 
playing upon the bayonet points of battalions massed in the 
hollow. 

Our troops were yearning to be commanded, and if the men, 
far and near, could have seen that the horseman on the small 


‘ T imagine that they were withdrawn from this spot because it was under 
the guns—the guns of the Great Redoubt—from which the enemy was about 
to open fire on our troops. 


Cuar.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 507 


white Arab above them was a general officer, they would have 
looked to every wave of his arm for a guiding signal; but Cod- 
rington had come to the East a mere traveler, and his simple 
forage cap had not the significance of the hat and the flowing 
plumes, which would have shown men far from the spot that 
a general officer was on the top of the bank. There were sol- 
diers, however, who gained the top almost at the same moment 
as their leader. First one here and there, then knots, then 
bevies of men clambered up. 

Hitherto the knowledge that there was to be an advance be- 
yond the bank had been confined to the people who chanced 
to be near Sir George Brown or General Codrington; but 
those who heard the words or caught the meaning of the di- 
visional general and the brigadier hastened to give effect to 
the will of their chiefs by sending their words along the line. 

The 7th Fusileers, being on the extreme right of Codring- 
ton’s brigade, was beyond the reach of his personal guidance ; 
Lacy Yea ana but Lacy Yea,! who commanded the regiment, was 
his Pusileers. 9 man of an onward, fiery, violent nature, not likely 
to suffer his cherished regiment to stand helpless under muz- 
zles pointed down on him and his people by the skirmishers 
close overhead. The will of a horseman to move forward, no 
less than his power to elude or overcome all obstacles, is sin- 
gularly strengthened by the education of the hunting-field, and 
Lacy Yea had been used in early days to ride to hounds in one 
of the stiffest of all hunting counties. To him this left bank 
of the Alma crowned with ‘Russian troops was very like the 
wayside acclivity which often enough in his boyhood had 
threatened to wall him back and keep him down in the depths 
of a Somersetshire lane whilst the hounds were running high 
up in the field some tén or fifteen feet above. His practiced 
eye soon showed him a fit ‘ shord’ or break in the scarped face 
of the bank, and then shouting out to his people, ‘ Never mind 
‘forming! Come on, men! Come on, anyhow!’ he put his 
cob to the task, and quickly gained the top. 

On either side of him, men of his regiment rapidly climbed 
up, and in such numbers that the Russian skirmishers who had 
been lining it fell back upon their battalions. 

And now, in the masses still crowded along the foot of the 
The heaving bank there rose up that murmur of prayer for closer 
Penne crowd fighting which, coming of a sudden from men of 
bank. Teuton blood, is the advent of a new and seemingly 
extrinsic power—the power ascribed in old times to the hand 


1 Pronounced Yaw. 


. | et othe 2 eae Ge 


508 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuar. XLIV. 


of an Immortal. From the first company of the 7th Fusileers 
to the left of the 19th Regiment, the deep, angry, gathering 
sound was‘ Forward!’ ‘Forward! ‘Forward!’ The throng 
was heaved; and presently the whole Ist brigade of the Light 
Division, carr ying with it the 19th and the 95th Regiments, 
surged up, and in numberless waves broke over the bank. 

That tendency to converge of which we have already spoken 
hai forge aned contracted the front presented by the five regi- 
converging ments now on the crest of the bank to a fraction 
ehiea only. of the line which they would have formed if 
soeanpe the they had been deployed in due order. The opera- 

3 tion of taking ground and opening out into line is 
hardly one to be undertaken by a crowd of soldiery on ground 
which may be called the glacis of the enemys fortress, and in 
the close presence of his formed battalions ; but the 7th Fusi- 
leers, being on the extreme right of the brigade, and not be- 
ing cramped at that time by any pressure from the regiments 
of the 2nd Division, was able to find space; and, though num- 
bers of the regiment were wanting, and though many belong- 
ing to other corps were mixed up with the Fusileers, Lacy Yea, 
using violent energy, was able in some degree to make the men 
Endeavors of Open out. But the silence which is the pride of the 
the men to English army could not at that moment be pre- 
the top of the served ; for numbers of men, separated from their 
bas companies and their regiments, yet eager to follow 
the path of duty, were anxiously seeking advice from officers, 
and trying, in fact, to place themselves under such command 
as time and circumstances would allow. In this condition of 
things, the utmost that could be done was to give to the mass 
the rudiments of a line formation. Colonel Blake, with the 
33rd, was able to make his regiment open out and form line. 

In the other three regiments, too, the soldiers strove hard 
to put themselves in their English array; but on either flank 
space was wanting; and although these battalions, having now 
open ground before them, were no longer a helpless mass, their 
state was not such as to enable them to move at the will of a 
commander. ‘They were an armed and warlike crowd. 

The five regiments now gathered on the crest of the bank 
The task they Were the first body of Allied troops which moved 
had before up on that day to dispute with the enemy for 
po ground which he held in strength. Both their right 
and their extreme left confronted the Russian infantry massed 
in columns upon either flank of the Great Redoubt; but the 
centre and left centre of this part of our assailing force stood 

right under the face of the work. 


Cuap. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 509 


Although at this time there was in general no due forma- 
tion, still the knotted chain into which the men of the five reg- 
iments found themselves extended was much more than long 
enough to outflank the Great Redoubt on either side; and the 
troops which formed the extreme left and the extreme right 
of our line were less exposed than the centre regiments to fire 
from the face of the work. But in order that he might at 
once crush those portions of our clustered force, the enemy, as 
we have seen, had magsive columns of infantry posted on either 
flank of the redoubt.~ Two of these columns—columns formed 
of the Kazan corps—now moved down the hill. 

The column,! descending from the eastern flank of the work, 
The Right Ka. Marched against that part of our line which was 
xan column formed by the 19th Regiment and some of the left 
acuinstthe © companies of the 23rd. It had already come part 
19th Regiment way down the slope before any great number of 
panies of the the English had clambered up to the top of the 
ey bank; and our soldiers, it would seem, at that time 
might have been forced back into the channel of the river by 
a continued and resolute advance of the column; but when 
one by one, and in knots and groups, our men gained the top 
of the bank—when they saw the ground above spreading 
The column is SMooth and open before them, and the huge gray, 
defeated, and square-built mass gliding down to where they were, 
a then, happily for England and for the freedom of 
Europe—for on ‘this, in no small measure, the common weal 
seems to rest—it came to be seen that now, after near forty 
years of peace, our soldiery were still gifted with the priceless 
quality which hinders them from feeling, in the way that for- 
eigners feel it, the weight of a column of infantry. In their 
English way, half sportive, half surly, our young soldiers seem 
ed to measure their task; and then—many of them still hold- 
ing betwixt their teeth the clusters of grapes which they had 


gathered in the vineyards below—they began shooting easy 


shots into the big, solid mass of infantry which was solemnly 
marching against them. The column was not unsteady, but it 
was perhaps an over-drilled body of men unskillfully or weakly 
handled. At all events, those who wielded it were unable to 
make its strength tell against clusters of English lads who 
stood facing it merrily, and teasing it with rifle balls. Soon the 
column was ordered or suffered to yield, and since it fell back 


1 A double battalion column, I believe, containing 1500 men. This Kazan 
corps, of which we shall see a great deal, is more commonly called in Rus- 
sian accounts the ‘Grand-Duke Michael’s Regiment.’ It was a regiment of 
‘Fusileers.’ 


~ 


510 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


to a spot where the ground was hollow, it lapsed nearly or 
quite out of sight. Then the 19th and the left companies of 
the 28rd, having thus ridded themselves of the infantry force 
in their front, began, as they advanced, to bend toward their 
right, and became a part of the force which was storming the 
Great Redoubt. | ° 

‘But the other Kazan column!1—the column coming down 
The Left Ka. from the west flank of the redoubt—was a force of 
rte nent” High mettle ; and it now began that obstinate fight 
with the ith With the 7th Fusileers which was destined to last 
Fusileers. from the commencement of the infantry fight until 
almost the close of the battle. 


XXII. 

But between the two bodies of troops thus engaged on 
The storming Cither flank with the enemy’s infantry, the great 
of the Great ~— bulk of Codrington’s brigade, swollen by the acces- 
Redoubt. : : : 

| sion of the 95th Regiment, was already moving up 
under the guns of the Great Redoubt. Codrington, indeed, 
had not waited for the moment when his whole brigade reach- 
ed the top of the bank; for, having gathered some knots of 


men on either side of him, he rode forward gently a few paces, . 


then waited until he gained some increase in numbers, and 
then again moved on, thus canvassing, as it were, for followers, 
and gradually carrying forward with him more and more of 
the troops. At first he got on slowly, for thé bulk of our offi- 
cers, having had no order to dispense with formation, they 
judged, when they gained the top of the bank, that they ought 
to strive to form line before they advanced, and they were la- 
boring to that end; but when it came to be understood that 
an advance without formation was sanctioned by the generals 
or compelled by stress of events, the whole of the force, though 
clubbed and broken into clusters of men, began to move up the 
gentle slope of the hill. 

For a little while, every gun in the great battery above re- 
mained dark and silent. . 

Amongst the Russians who were plying their field-glasses 
from the parapet of the Great Redoubt there was a question 
meet for debate:—‘If the scarlet men of‘the sea were pre- 
‘sumptuously bent upon storming the work, where was the 
‘ereat column of attack, and where the great column of sup- 
‘port, and where the great columns of reserve which would 
‘have been formed for such an enterprise? Yet, if they had 


1 A double battalion column, I believe, containing 1500 men. 


Cuap.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 511 


‘no such purpose, why were so many men coming up under 
‘the guns, within grape-shot range? And, unless those En- 
‘lish were really attacking in force, why, in the name of the 
‘Holy Virgin and our own blessed Sergius,! why, riding for- 
‘ward even in front of the skirmishers, should there be that 
‘superb-looking horseman on the gray charger, whose visible 
‘rage, no less than his flowing plumes, clearly showed that he 
‘held high command ?? 

Upon the whole, it seemed that the advance of the red-coat- 
ed soldiery was an irruption of skirmishers preparatory to an 
attack in force, but was an irruption so strong as to be worthy 
of all that artillery could do to crush it. So, the Russian 
sharpshooters having now, for the most part, fallen back, or 
moved aside out of the line of fire, the gunners in the Great 
Redoubt made ready to open fire upon our regiments with 
round shot, canister, and grape. 

First one gun, then another, then more. From east to west 
the parapet grew white, and henceforth it lay so enfolded in 
its bank of silver smoke that no gun could any longer be seen 
by our men, except at the’ moment when it was pouring its 
blaze through the cloud. On what one may call a glagis, at 
three hundred yards from the mouths of the guns, the light- 
ning, the thunder, and the bolt are not far apart. Death loves 
a crowd; and in some places our soldiery were pressing on so 
close together, that when a round shot cut its way into the 
midst of them, it dealt a sure havoc. 

There began a slaughter of our people. Some of the men 
struck down had got up a good way on the slope; others 


were so newly come to the top of the bank that they fell back ° 


dead and dying into the channel of the river; but all who were 
not struck down moved forward. Some of the clusters into 
which our men had gathered were eight or ten deep; and the 
round shot, tearing cruelly through and through, mowed down 
so many of our devoted soldiery that several times the crowd 
left standing was thinned. 

But only for a moment; because that singular tendency 
which had begun with the advance into the vineyards was now 
setting in more strongly. Moving to the attack without, being 
ordered to make toward any given spot, almost every officer 
and man (except those toward the flanks who were engaged 
with the enemy’s infantry) had instinctively proposed to him- 
self the same goal; and this goal was the Great Redoubt. 

1 The troops in and near the redoubt-belonged to the 16th Division, and 


this Division carried with it a wooden image of the saint, solemnly intrusted 
to it by the Bishop of Moscow. 


. 


512 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


Upon the Great Redoubt, therefore, the regiments kept always 
converging; and in less time than it took the Russian. artil- 
lerymen to sponge and load their guns, our people, inclining 
away from the flanks, and pressing in toward the centre, filled 
up every space cut clear by the shot; and this so constantly 
that, again, after a fall of many men, and again, and still again, 
there was always a flock ready for the slaughter. In the 
‘Derbyshire,”! Captain Eddington was shot in the throat and 
killed; Polhill was torn and slain with grape. The colonel 
was wounded, and Champion took the command of the regi- 
ment. He was a man of great gentleness and piety; and if he 
was not highly endowed with intellectual gifts, he was able to 
- express the feelings of his heart with something of a poetic 
force. His mind was accustomed to dwell very much on the 
world that lies beyond the grave; and in the midst of this 
scene of carnage he gained, as it were, a seeming glimpse of 
the happy state ; for when the younger Eddington fell at his 
side, Champion paused to see what ailed him, and, looking upon 
his young friend’s pale face, he saw it suddenly clothed with a 
‘most sweet expression.’ It was because death was on him 
that the blissful look had come. In the mind of Champion the 
sight had a deep import; for he was of the faith that God’s 
Providence is special, and to him the beautiful smile on the 
features of ‘the dead’ was the smile of an immortal man gen- 
tly carried away from earth by the very hand of his Maker. 

Yet this piety of his was of no unwarlike cast. Nay, ie 
was of so noble a sort that, though he had not willingly chosen 
the profession of arms, yet, w hen he prayed, he was accustom- 
ed to render thanks to his Creator for vouchsafing to make 
him a hardy soldier; and being, he said, very strong in the be- 
lief that he could die as piously on the battle-field as in ‘a 
‘downy bed, he pressed on content with his ‘ Derbies’ to the 
face of the Great Redoubt.2 

And now, whilst the assailing force was rent from front to 
rear with grape and canister poured down from the heavy 
guns above, another and a not less deadly arm was brought 
to bear against it; for the enemy marched a body of infantry 
into the rear of the breastwork, and his helmeted soldiers, 
kneeling behind the parapet at the intervals between the em- 
brasures, watched ready with their muskets on the earthwork 
till they thought our people were near enough, and then fired 
into the crowd. Moreover, the troops on either flank of the 
redoubt began to fire obliquely into the assailing mass. 


1 The 95th. 2 Champion’s letters. 


Russian battery commanding 
df) the Great Redoubt. 


The Ouglitz 
battalions, ¢; (p> t 


THE STORMING OF 
THE GREAT REDOUBT. 


+ 


Z the Vladimir 


The right Kazan colamav battalions 
5 retiring Aza The Great Redoubt § AZ) #2.9 
4 \ Thurteen heavy gnns 3§ * 
1 Pippo 
Y, 
wits 2 ren cota. 
a992 2299 
‘wt / 358 Oma ole 4 & * es a3, isi The 7th Fusileers imperfect- 
Ha A of BPLe7e PEEL YIN Ne Boek Ie. ee \ ly formed and engaged with 
/ / 7 ng Gm? beh eS \ the left Kazan column. 


ORY, a rot } ~ } rN 
Doe Gh of Ase Gh Crue Es a 


x2 


514 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA [Cuap. XLIV. 


Then, for such of our men as were new to war, it became 
time to learn that the ear is a false guide in the computation 
of passing shot, and that amid notes sounding like a very tor- 
rent of balls, the greater part of even a crowded force may re- 
main unhurt. The storm of rifle and musket balls, of grape 
and canister, came in blasts; and though there were pauses, 
yet, whilst a blast was sweeping through, it seemed to any 
young soldier, guided by the sound of the rushing missiles, 
that nowhere betwixt them, however closely he might draw 
in his limbs, could there be room for him to stand unscathed. 
But no man shrank. Our soldiers, still panting with the 
violence of their labor in crossing the river and scaling the 
bank, scarcely fired a shot, and they did not speak; but they 
every one went forward. The truth i s, that the weak-hearted 
men had been left behind in the pardéte and buildings of the 
village; the dross was below, and the force on the hill-side 
was pure metal. It was so intent on its purpose, that no one, 
they say, at this time was seen to cast back a look toward the 
1st Division. 

The assailants were nearing the breastwork, when, after a 
lull of a few moments, its ordnance all thundered at once, or, at 
least, so nearly at the same moment, that the pathway of their 
blast was a broad one; and there were many who fell; but 
the onset of our soldiery was becoming a rush. Codrington, 
riding in front of the men, gayly cheered them on; and all who 
were not struck down by shot pressed on toward the long 
bank of smoke which lay dimly infolding the redoubt. 

But already—though none of the soldiery engaged then 
knew who wrought the spell—a hard stress had been put upon 
the enemy. For a while, indeed, the white bank of smoke, lit 
through here and there with the slender flashes of musketry, 
stood fast in the front of the parapet, and still all but shroud- 
ed the helmets and the glittering bayonets within; but it 
grew more thin; it began to rise; and, rising, it disclosed a 
grave change in the counsels of the Russian Generals, Some 
Englishmen—or many perhaps at the same moment—looking 
keen thr ough the smoke, saw teams of artillery horses moving, 
and there was a sound of ordnance wheels. Our panting sol- 
diery broke from their silence. ‘ By all that is holy! he is lim- 
‘bering up! ‘He is carrying offhis guns!’ ‘Stoleaway! Stole 
‘away! Stole away.’ The glacis of the Great Redoubt had 
come to sound more joyous than the covert’s side in England. 

The embrasures were empty, and in rear of the work long 
artillery teams—eight-horse and ten-horse teams—were rapid- 
ly dragging off the guns. 


ol 


eS a ee ee ee 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 515 


Then a small, childlike youth ran forward before the throng 
carrying a color. This was young Anstruther. He carried 
the Queen’s color of the Royal Welsh. Fresh from the games 
of English school life, he ran fast; for, heading all who strove 
to keep up with him, he gained the redoubt, and dug the butt 
end of the flag-staff into the parapet, and there for a moment 
he stood holding it tight and taking breath. Then he was 
shot dead; but his small hands, still clasping the flag-staff, drew 
it down along with him, and the crimson silk lay covering the 
boy with its folds; but only for a moment, because William 
Evans, a swift-footed soldier, ran forward, gathered up the flag, 
and, raising it proudly, made claim to the Great Redoubt on 
behalf of the ‘Royal Welsh.! The colors, floating high in the 
air, and seen by our people far and near, kindled in them a 
raging love for the ground where it stood. Breathless men 
found speech. Codrington, still in the front, uncovered his 
head, waved his cap for a sign to his people, and then riding 
straight at one of the embrasures, leaped his gray Arab into the 
breastwork. There were some eager and swift-footed soldiers 
who sprang the parapet nearly at the same moment; more 
followed. At the same instant Norcott’s riflemen came run- 
ning in from the east, and the swiftest of them bounded into 
the work at its right flank. The enemy’s still lingering skirm- 
ishers began to fall back, and descended—some of them slowly 
—into the dip where their battalions were massed. Our sol. 
diery were up; and in a minute they flooded in over the para- 
pet, hurrahing, jumping over, _hurrahing, a joyful English 
crowd. 

The cheer had not yet died away on the hillside when from 
the enemy’s battalions standing massed in the hollow there 
rose up—as though it had been wrung from the very hearts of 
brave men defeated—a long, sorrowful, wailing sound. This 
was the bitter and wholesome grief of a valiant soldiery not 
content to yield. For men who so grieve there is hope. The 
redoubt had been Bele by our people; it was not yet lost to 
the Czar. 

There was se one piece of ordnance remaining in the 
work. This-was a brass 24-pound howitzer. At the “sight of 
the piece (for our people were mainly of Anglo-Saxon blood), 
a characteristic desire to assert the claims of private ownership 


1 Afterward, there being a punctilio which governs those matters in our 
service, William Evans delivered the color to his superior, Corporal Soulbey, 
and Corporal Soulbey delivered it to Sergeant Luke O’Connor. Sergeant 
Luke O’Connor, though he soon got badly wounded, would not part with the 
honor of carrying ‘the cherished standard, and he bore it all the rest of the 
day. 


516 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV, 


began to seize upon the crowd; and more than one man, so 
they say, scratched his mark upon the piece, that he might 
make it the peculiar trophy of himself or his regiment. 

But there was a better prize than this within the reach of a 
nimble soldier ;! for of the guns moving off toward the rear, 
there was one which, dragged by only three horses, had scarce- 
ly yet gained the rear of the redoubt. Captain Bell, of the 
Royal Welsh, ran up, overtook it, and pointing his capless pis- 
tol at the head of the driver, ordered him, or rather signed to 
him, to stop instantly and dismount. The driver sprang from 
his saddle and fied. Bell seized the bridle of the near horse, 
and he had already turned the gun round, when Sir George 
Brown riding up angry, and ordering him to go to his compa- 
ny, he of course obeyed, yet not until he had effectually started 
the horses in the right direction; for they drew the gun down 
the hill, and the capture became complete.? 

Bell went back to his corps, and in truth his services there 
were soon about to be needed; for already Colonel Chester, 
commanding the regiment, had been killed, and Campbell, who 
then took the command, being afterwards struck down, the 
charge of the regiment devolved upon Bell. 

. Of the men of the five regiments which had moved forward 
from the top of the river’s bank, many now lay upon the hill- 
side dead or wounded; and the 7th Fusileers, with fragments 
of other regiments, was still engaged with the enemy’s infan- 
try; but the greatest portions of four battalions,? and a wing 
of another battalion,*-were now upon the ground which the 
enemy had made his strong-holl. 

Yet the tendency to converge toward the redoubt as their 
goal had so closely compressed the assailing mass, that its front 
now hardly outflanked the parapet; and all the assailants of 
the redoubt were either within the work or closely gathered 
round it. 

They were perhaps 2000 men, and their onset had for the 
moment so bewildered the enemy that, having close at hand 


1 When troops obtain possession of a gun left by the enemy in a field- 
work, they are not said to have ‘taken a gun’ in the true and highest sense 
of the phrase. It is only by the observance of this distinction that the Duke 
of Wellington can be said to have ‘never lost a gun.’ He surely, for instance, 
abandoned guns at Burgos; but because they were left by him in the works, 
and not taken from him in the field, the acquisition of them by the enemy 
was not a capture. 

2 The gun is now at Woolwich. The horses served for some time in our 
‘Black Battery.’ 

3 The 33rd, the ‘ Royal Welsh’ (or 23rd), the ‘ Derbies’ (95th), and the 19th. 

* 2nd battalion Rifle Brigade. 


q 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 517 


great masses of infantry, unbroken and scarcely touched— 
masses numbering full 10,000 bayonets—he nevertheless hung 
back, and for a while did little to molest our people in their 
occupation of the work. Our soldiery were well inclined to 
rest and make themselves at home; and Codrington, alighting 
from his horse, began to show the men how best to establish 
themselves on the ground they had won by lying down outside 
the parapet, and resting their rifles upon its top. 

Thus the assaulting force had carried the great field-work 
which was the key of the enemy’s position on the Alma; and 
if at this time the supporting Division had been half way up 
the hill, or even if it had been beginning to crown the banks 
of the river on the Russian side, the toils and perils of the day 
would perhaps have been over. But our men were only a 
crowd; and they, all of them, wise and simple, now began to 
learn in the great school of action, that the most. brilliant 
achievement by a disordered mass of soldiery requires the 
speedy support of formed troops. 

Then—and then, as is said, for the first time—the men cast 
No supports back a look toward the quarter from which they 
yet coming up might hope to see supports advancing; but when 

. top of “ ° - 
the rivers | they carried their eyes down the slope strewn thick 
pent with the wounded and the dead, they saw that, 
from the ground where they stood down home to the top of 


_the river’s bank, there were no succors coming. 


XXIII. 
Where were the supports ? 
The Duke of Cambridge is the grandson of King George 
The Duke of JIIJ., and a cousin of the Queen. At the outbreak 


“Cambridge. — of the war he was 35 years of age. He had made 


the most of such experience as could be gained by following 
the vocation of a military life in the British Isles. He under- 
stood’the mechanism of our army system, and, so far as could 
be judged by the test of home service, he was a good and a 
diligent soldier. Nay, he had some qualifications for command 
which are not very common in England. He loved order, 
method, and organization. Long before the war it had been 
said that he was gifted with that faculty of moving troops 
which is one of the prime qualifications of a general officer ; 
and the skill with which his superb Division had been now de- 
ployed seemed to give safe ground for saying that the flatter- 
ing rumor was true. He was zealous and devoted to duty. 
He had the habit of exercising forethought. He was sagacious, 
and was more keenly alive than most other men of our land- 


518 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


service to passing and coming events. He had a good milita- 
pyseyes 

aie was a great respecter of the public voice in England, and 
was even, perhaps, too ready to suffer himself to be swayed by 
light, transient breezes of ‘opinion.’ He had no dread of inno- 
vations, and the beard that clothed his frank, handsome, manly 
face was the symbol of his adhesion to a then new revolt against. 
custom. He was much loved, for he was of a genial temper ; 
and his rank was so well helped out by his hereditary faculty 
of remembering those with whom he had once conversed that 
far from chilling his intercourse with other men—it enabled 
him to give happy effect to the kindliness of his nature. But, 
after all, what a general has to do is to try to overcome the 
enemy by exposing his own soldiery to all needful risks. At 
any fit time he must be willing and eager to bring his own 
people to the slaughter for the sake of making havoc with the 
enemy; and it is right for him to be able to do this without at 
the time being seen to feel one pang. Nay, however certain 
it may be that his gentler nature will overcome him on the 
morrow, it is well for him to be able to pass through the blood- 
iest hours of battle with something of a ruthless joy. The 
Duke of Cambridge was wanting in this kind of truculence ; 
and, however careless of his own life (for he had the personal 
courage of his race), he was liable to be cruelly wrung by the 
weight of a command which charged him with the lives of 
other men. He was of an anxious temperament; and with 
him the danger was that, in moments when great stress might 
come to be put upon him, the very keenness of his desire to 
judge aright would become a cruel hinderance. Nor was hea 
man who who would be driven to burst his way though scru- 
ples and doubts by the impulse of any selfish ambition. Far 
from straining after occasions for acting on his own judgment, 
he would have liked, if he could, to receive a series of precise 
orders which would serve to guide him in every successive 
change. But a general of division must not expect to be long 
in a campaign without being thrown upon his own judgment. 
Lord Raglan had furnished the Duke with one order—an or- 
der ‘to support the Light Division in its forward movement’ 


1 A few words which fell from Lord Raglan in October, 1854, have caused 
me, perhaps, to speak with more confidence on this subject than I might 
otherwise venture to show. In that month—I believe on the 15th—Lord 
Raglan spoke to me of the exceeding anxiety of the Duke of Cambridge 
about the Inkerman position, and he said that in consequence of this pressure 
measures had been taken. Exactly three weeks afterward the very ground 
about which the Duke had been so anxious was the scene of the mighty on- 
slaught which commenced the battle of Inkerman. 


Cuapr. XLIV.] - INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 519 


—and the Duke of Cambridge had begun to obey it by follow- 
ing the advance of the Light Division, and bringing his force 
home down to the inclosures ;, but, having thus come to the 
end of the open ground, he felt the want of some new sanction 
before he carried his Division into the vineyards. He knew 
that, for a while at least, the superb array of his Guards and 
Highlanders would be shattered by passing through inclosures, 
and he wished for another order from head-quarters before he 
submitted to see his beautiful line broken up. The order ‘to 
‘support the Light Division’ was becoming an imperfect guide, 
because that same Light Division had rushed headlong upon a 
task which was dissolving great part of it into a vast swarm 
of skirmishers. Were the Guards and Highlanders to do the 
like? Were they to do thus, although their efficacy as a force 
acting in support of the troops in advance was likely to depend 
Halt of the ists upon their being able to come up in good order ? 
eae The Ist Division was halted; yet the Light Divi- 
vineyards. = sion was moving rapidly forward. 

Why was there this failure of concert between the Light 
and the Ist Division? Why was there no man there who 
could link the one division to the other by a few decisive 
words ? 

Lord Raglan had already given his orders, and at this mo- 
ment, led forward by a golden chance, he was riding far away 
in another part of the field. Sir George Brown, already in the 
inclosures, and having no line of skirmishers to cover the ad- 
vance of his battalions, was unable to govern the movements 
of his Division in such a way as to prevent it from getting too 
far in advance of the Guards and Highlanders; and afterward, 
when Sir George went forward in person with that part of his 
Division which stormed the Redoubt, he seems to have found 
no means of communicating with the Duke of Cambridge and 
pressing for the immediate support of the Ist Division. 

Every moment was precious; for the men of the Light Di- 
vision were moving down at a run through the vineyards, or 
wading across the river. . 

At the time of this halt the battalion of the Grenadier Guards 
was across the great road.” Thither now from the west a horse- 
General Airey Man came galloping up. Of an- actual order Gen- 
cal eral Airey was not the bearer; but he was a man 
whose loyalty toward his chief made him always feel certain 
that what he himself saw clearly to be right was exactly what 
his chief desired to have done, and the result was that, in an 
emergency, he was able to speak with a weight which virtually 
brought to bear upon the matter in hand the whole power of 


i 


520 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ([Cuap. XLIV. 


Head-quarters. His keen eye had detected the halt of the 1st 
Division, and he saw also that the Light Division was pushing 
forward at a run. Another man would have gone round or 
sent to the commander of the forces for his opinion ; but every 
moment of the lapsing time was bringing danger. 

Airey rode straight up to General Bentinck,! and explained 
His exposition it to be Lord Raglan’s meaning that the 1st Divi- 
of the order to sion should instantly continue its advance in sup- 
support. port of the Light Division. ‘ Must we,’ asked Ben- 
tinck, ‘must we always keep within three hundred yards of the 
‘Light Division?’ ‘No,’ said Airey, ‘not necessarily at any 
‘fixed distance; that would not be possible. What his Royal 
‘ Highness has to do is to support the Light Division by ad- 
‘vancing in conformity with its movements.’ Then the Ist 
The et Divic Division moved forward, and, breaking into the in- 
sion resumes Closures, began to work its difficult way through 
Hs advance. the vineyards. 

Afterwards—but not, it seems, by any formal order to halt 
The Division the advance of the 1st Division was again stop- 
aeeinstipoed ped for a time: yet Codrington’s brigade had then 

‘begun to rush forward. From the ground on which 
he was riding, Sir De Lacy Evans could see in profile the swift 
Step taken by Cisordered advance of Codrington’s brigade, and the 
Hans. stop to which the 1st Division had come. He un- 
derstood the danger; and, comprehending at once that the 
advance of Codrington’s brigade was a movement requiring 
instant support, he took upon himself to send a message con- 
veying his opinion to the Duke of Cambridge. 

But when a division of infantry extended in line is marched 
through gardens and walled inclosures, the power of the gen- 
eral commanding it must always be more or less thrown into 
Want of free abeyance, because the want of an unobstructed view 
communica. and of free lateral communication makes it impossi- 
line wacae Die for him to know what is going on along the 
through inclo- whole line, or to send swift orders to the more dis- 
ine tant companies. For a time his authority is neces- 
sarily dispersed among many; and if the force is moving de- 
liberately and in face of an enemy, numbers of little councils 
of war will of necessity be going on here and there, in order 
to judge how best to deal with what seems to be the state of 
the battle in each field, each garden, each vineyard. 

The right of the 1st Division was formed by the brigade of 


1 Lord Raglan had made an order specially providing that the bearer of 
an order for a divisional general should deliver it to the first brigadier whom 
he happened to find, to be by him transmitted to the divisional chief. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 521 


‘Guards.’ In its origin, the appellation given to 
the regiments called ‘the Guards’ imported that 
the personal safety of the sovereign was peculiarly committed 
to their charge. Princes have imagined that by specially as- 
cribing this duty to a particular portion of their armed forces, 
rather than to the whole, and by granting some privileges to 
troops specially distinguished as their chosen defenders, they 
secure to themselves good means of safety in time of trouble, 
and that still, upon the whole, they do more good than harm 
to their military system by establishing a healthy spirit of ri- 
valry between the favored body and the rest of the army. 
The danger is, that a corps thus set apart will come to be con- 
sidered as a great reserve of military strength, and that, for 
that very reason, any disaster which it may sustain will be 
looked upon as more ruinous than a disaster of equal propor- 
tions occurring to other regiments. 

With us, the cor ps of Guards numbers only seven battalions, 
distr ibuted into three regiments, called the Grenadier Guards, 
the Coldstream, and the. Scots Fusileer Guards; and each of 


The Guards. 


’ these three regiments had sent one battalion to form the bri- 


gade of Guards now serving in the Ist Division. The officers 
of the corps enjoy some privileges tending to accelerate their 
advancement in the army. ‘They are, for the most part, men 
well born or well connected ; and, being aided by a singularly 
able body of sergeants and corporals, they are not so over- 
burdened in peace-time by their regimental duties as to have 
their minds in the condition which too often results from mo- 
notonous labor. They have deeply at heart the honor of the 
whole brigade as well as of their respective corps, and the feel- 
ing is quickened by a sense of the jealousy which their privi- 
leges breed, or rather, perhaps, by the tradition of that ancient 
rivalry which exists between the ‘ Guards’ and the ‘ Line.’ 

The men of the rank and file have some advantages over the 
Line in the way of allowances and accoutrements. They are 
all of fine stature. Without being over-drilled, they are well 
enough practiced in their duties; and whoever ‘loves war, sees 
grandeur in the movement of the stately forms and the tower- 
ing bearskins which mark a battalion of the Guards. It is 
true that these household troops are cut off from the experi- 
ence gained by Line regiments in India and the Colonies; but, 
whenever England is at war in Europe, or against people of 
European descent, it is the custom and the pride of the Guards 
to take their part. 

The force is deeply prized by the Queen, and the class from 
which it takes its officers connects it with many families of 


522 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


high station in the country. Its officers have so many rela- 
tives and friends amongst those who generate conversation in 
London, that when ‘the Guards’ are sent upon active service, 
the war in which they engage becomes, as it were for their 
sake, a subject of interest in circles which commonly yield only 
a languid attention to events beyond the seas. Grief for the 
death of Line officers is dispersed among the counties of the 
three kingdoms ;. and when they fall in ‘battle, it is the once 
merry country-house, the vicarage, or the wayside cottage of 
some old Peninsular officer, that becomes the house of mourn- 
ing. But by the loss of officers of the household regiments 
the central body of English society is touched, is shocked, is 
almost angered ; and he. who has to sit in his saddle and see a 
heavy slave hter of the ‘ Guards,’ may be almost forced to think 
ruefully of” fathers, of mothers, of wives, of sisters, who are 
amongst his own friends. 

There was nothing in the history or tr aditions of the famous 
corps of ‘the Guards’ to justify the notion that they were to 
be more often kept out of the brunt of the battle than the 
troops of the line; and in this very war they were destined to 
encounter the hardest trials of soldiers, and to go on fighting 
and enduring until the glory of past achievements, the strange 
ascendency which those achievements had won, and a few score 
of wan men with hardly the garb of soldiers, should be all that 
remained of ‘the Guards.’ Still it is certain that the house- 
hold battalions were more or less regarded as a cherished body 
of troops, and that the loss of the brigade of Guards would be 
jooked upon as a loss more signal, and in that sense more dis- 
astrous than the loss of three other battalions of equal strength. 

Now the enemy, whilst he dealt with the tumultuous onset 
of Codrington’s brigade, had rightly enough given some of his 
care to the more ceremonious advance of the 1st Division; and, 
since the Guards confronted both the Causeway batteries and 
the Great Redoubt, they of course underwent for a time a fire 
of artillery, and some men were struck down.'! The Grenadiers 
and the Scots Fusileers suffered the most. This loss did not 
occur as‘a consequence of any mistake: it was in the order of 
things that it should be. But, when men are new to war, and 
so placed in the battle-field as to be for the moment cut off 
from all knowledge of what is going on elsewhere, they are 
prone to imagine that a force which they see undergoing slaugh- 
ter, yet having no immediate means of attack or resistance, 


1 Even when the Great Redoubt had been dismantled, and the Causeway 
batteries withdrawn, there were some guns in battery at more remote spots, 
which seem to have been brought to bear on the Guards. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 523 


must needs be the victim of some piece of forgetfulness or er- 
ror; and when once this notion has got its lodgment in the 
brain of an officer, his next step probably is to try to avert 
what he fancies to be an impending disaster by venturing to 
disobey orders, or by counseling another to do so. 

‘The brigade of Guards will be destroyed,’ said one adviser; 
Suggestion and he asked whether it ought not to fall back a 
. that the little in order to recover its formation ? 

Guards should = 

fallback in or. | ‘Lhese words were spoken by an officer not hold- 
der to reform. ing any high rank,! and they owe their whole im- 
portance to the answer which they elicited and the propulsion 
which thereupon followed. 

He who answered the question was a veteran soldier, and it 
was with a deference no less wise than graceful that the Duke 
of Cambridge loved to seek and to follow his» counsels. 

Whilst Ensign Campbell. was passing from boyhood to man’s 
Sir Colin estate, he was made partaker in the great transac- 
Campbell. tions which were then beginning to work out the 
liberation of Europe. Inthe May of 1808 he received his first 
commission—a commission in the 6th Foot—and a few weeks 
afterward—then too young to carry the colors—he was serv- 
ing with his regiment upon the heights of Vimieira. There 
the lad saw the turning of a tide in human affairs, saw the 
opening of the mighty strife between ‘Column’ and ‘ Line,’? 
saw France—long unmatched upon the Continent—retreating 
before British infantry, saw the first of Napoleon’s stumbles, 
and the fame of Sir Arthur Wellesley beginning to dawn over 
Europe. 

He was in Sir John Moore’s campaign, and at its closing 


1 T foresee that what I here say as to the obscure rank of the officer who 
made this suggestion will be regarded by some as inaccurate; and, indeed, I 
am aware that the belief of those who hold the contrary of this to be true is 
based npon grounds apparently strong. I did not hear the words myself; 
and all I can say is, that my statement is founded upon authority which 
makes me feel certain that I do rightly in making it; though I also think I 
am right in saying that I did not myself hear the words. If my statement 
as to the obscure rank of the officer is true, it follows, I think, that I am right 
in not disclosing his name, because (upon that supposition) his words had 
no sort of importance beyond that attributed to them in the text. 

2 In his most interesting and most valuable ‘ Life of the Duke of Welling- 
ton,’ Mr. Gleig repeats the description of Vimicira, which the Duke once 
gave in his presence at Strathfieldsaye. The Duke’s words are thus given 
by Mr. Gleig :—‘The French came on on that occasion with great boldness, 
‘and seemed to feel their way less than I always found them to do after- 
‘ward. They came on, as usual, in very heavy columns, and I received them 
‘in line, which they were not accustomed to, and we repulsed them three 
‘several times.’ 


524 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


scene—Corunna. He was with the Walcheren expedition; and 
afterward, returning to the Peninsula, he was at the battle of 
Barossa, the defense of Tarifa, the relhef of Taragona, and the 
combats at Malaga and Osma. He led a forlorn hope at the 
storming of St. Sebastian, and was there wounded twice. He 
was at Vittoria ; he was at the passage of the Bidassoa; he 
took part in the American war of 1814 ; he served in the West 
Indies; he served in the Chinese war of 1842. These occa- . 
sions he had so well used that his quality as a soldier was per- 
fectly well known. He had been praised, and praised again 
and again; but since he was not so connected as to be able to 
move the dispensers of military rank, he gained promotion 
slowly, and it was not until the second Sikh war that he had a 
command as a general: even then he had no rank in the army ~ 
above that of a colonel. At Chilianwalla he commanded a di- 
vision. Marching in person with one of his two brigades, he 
had gained the heights on the extreme right of the Sikh posi- 
tion, ‘and then bringing round the left shoulder, he had rolled 
up the enemy’s line and won the day; but since his other Dri- 
gade (being separated from him by a long distance) had want- 
ed his personal control, and fallen into trouble, the briliancy 
of the general result w hich he had achieved did not save him 
altogether from criticism. That day he was wounded for the 
fourth time. He commanded a division at the great battle of 
Gujerat; and, being charged to press the enemy’s retreat, he 
had so executed his task that 158 guns and the ruin of the foe 
were the fruit of the victory. In 1851 and the following year 
he commanded against the hill-tribes. It was he who forced 
the Kohat Pass. It was he who, with only a few horsemen 
and some guns, at Punj Pao, compelled the submission of the 
combined tribes then acting against him with a force of 8000 
men. It was he who, at Ishakote, with a force of less than 
3000 men, was able to end the strife; and when he had brought 
to submission all those beyond the Indus who were in arms 
against the Government, he instantly gave proof of the breadth 
and scope of his mind, as well as of the force of his character ; 
for he withstood the angry impatience of men in authority 
over him, and insisted that he must be suffered to deal with 
the conquered people in the spirit of a politic and merciful 
ruler. 

After serving with all this glory for some forty-four years, 
he .came back to England; but between the Queen and him 
there stood a dense crowd of families—men, women, and chil- 
dren—extending farther than the eye could "reach, and armed 
with strange precedents, which made it out to be right that 


Cuar. XLIV.7 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 525 


people who had seen no service should be invested with high 
command, and that Sir Colin Campbell should be only a colo- 
nel. Yet he was of so fine a nature that, although he did not 
always avoid great bursts of anger, there was no ignoble bit- 
terness in his sense of wrong. He awaited the time when per- 
haps he might have high command, and be able to serve his 
country in a sphere proportioned to his strength. His friends, 
however, were angry for his sake; and, along with their strong 
devotion toward him, there was bred a fierce hatred of a sys- 
tem of military dispensation which could keep in the back- 
ground a man thus tried and thus known. 

Upon the breaking out of the war with Russia, Sir Colin 
was appointed—not to the command of a division, but of a 
brigade. It was not till the June of 1854 that his rank in the 
army became higher than that of a colonel. 

Campbell was not the slave, he was the master of his call- 
ing, and therefore it was that he had been able to save his in- 
tellect from the fate of being drowned in military details. He 
knew that, although a general must have a complete mastery 
of even the smallest of such things, still they were only a part 
—a minute though essential part—of the great science of war. 
He understood the precious material whereof our army is form- 
ed. He heartily loved our soldiery; for he was a soldier, and 
had fellow-feeling with soldiers, and they had fellow-feeling 
with him. Instinctively they knew that together they might 
do great things—he by their help, they by his. Knowing the 
worth of their devotion and their bodily strength, he cherished 
them with watchful care; and they, on their part, loved, hon- 
ored, and obeyed him with a faith that all he ordered was 
right. He set great store upon discipline, but it was never for 
discipline’s s sake that he did so (as if that were itself an end), 
but because he knew it to be one of the main sources of mili- 
tary ascendency. So, although the officers and soldiers serv- 
ing under him got no more rest than was good for them, they 
were never vexed wantonly; and, in proportion as they grew 
in knowledge of their calling, they came to understand why it 
was that their chief compelled them to toil. 

A bodily ardor for fighting may be more or less masked and 
hidden; but he to whom this great passion is wanting is with- 
out the quality of a general. For warfare is so anxious and 
complex a business that against every vigorous movement 
heaps of reasons can forever be found; and if a man is so cold 
a lover of battle as to have no str onger guide than the poor 
balance of the arguments and counter- arguments which he ad- 
dresses to his troubled spirit, his mind, driven first one way 


526 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


and then another, will oscillate, or even revolve, turning miser- 
ably in its own axis and making no movement straight for- 
ward. Now it is a characteristic still marking the Scottish 
blood, that often —and not the less so when it flows in the 
veins of a gentle-hearted being—it is seen to fire strangely and 
suddenly at the prospect of a fight. Campbell loved warfare 
_ with a deep passion; and at the thought of battle his grand, 
rugged face used to kindle with uncontrollable joy. 

‘The brigade of Guards will be destroyed; ought it not to 
‘fall back ?? . When Sir Colin Campbell heard this saying, his 
blood rose so high that the answer he gave—impassioned and 
far-resounding—was of a quality to govern events. 

‘It is better, sir, that every man of Her Majesty’s Guards 
Campbell’s an. ‘Should lie dead upon the field than that they 
swertothesug- “should now turn their backs upon the enemy.’ 
gestion thatthe : : aise 
Guards should Doubts and questionings ceased. The Division 
fee went forward. | 

Sir Colin Campbell rode off to his left. His brigade at this 
Advance ofthe time was not under a heavy fire, and he effected the 
re Division t© operation of passing the river very simply; for 
the left bank pera Pp 5 y Simply; tor, 
ofthe river. without attempting formal evolutions, each of his 
regiments, whilst it advanced, tried to keep up, as well as the 
nature of the ground would allow, the rudiments of its line 
formation, and when it gained the opposite bank its array was 
carefully restored. As soon as one of the regiments was duly 
formed on the Russian side of the river it was moved forward, 
and, since the ground presented more obstacles toward our 
left than toward our right, the brigade fell naturally, and with- 
out design, into direct échelon of regiments. The 42nd was 
in advance; on the left of that regiment there was the 93rd, 
somewhat refused; and on the left of the 93rd, but still far- 
ther refused, there came the 79th... 

Meanwhile the Guards descended toward the bank with so 
much of the line formation as was permitted by the obstacles 
they had to overcome. Upon gaining the river’s side, the Cold- 
stream broke into open column of sections, in order to make 
the most advantage of the ford; and when it reached the op- 
posite bank it preserved its column formation for a time, in 
order to march the more conveniently round an elbow there 
formed by the river. When this movement was complete, the 
color-sergeants went out to take ground, and the battalion 
opened out into line formation with all the precision and cer- 
emony of a birthday review. On the right of this battalion, 
and moving with less deliberation, the Scots Fusileer Guards 
got through the inclosures and the river. On the right of that 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, ~ ' 527 


last corps there marched the battalion of the Grenadier Guards. 
The Grenadiers were a body of men so well instructed and so 
skillfully handled, that in working their way through the in- 
closures they were able to preserve all the essential elements 
of their line formation... When they came to the bank, they 
looked for no ford, but, treating the river as a brook—as a 
brook which a soldier must pass without picking his way?— 
the battalion marched through it in-line ;? and though there 
were some points where a passage was easy, others where the 
soldiers had to wade deep, and some few, so they say, where 
the men were put to their swimming, still each file kept its . 
place in the line with a near approach to exactness. At length 
—but after a painful lapse of time, for Codrington’s disordered 
battalions were clinging all this while to the parapet of the 
Great Redoubt—the brigade of Guards stood halted, and form- 
ing anew under cover of the bank on the Russian side of the 
river. Their people were sheltered; but the heads of their 
colors, protruding a little above the top of the bank, could be 
seen by men looking down from the redoubt. 

But already there was nearly an end of the precious mo- , 
Time was laps-- Ments in which it was possible for the 1st Division 
ing; to bring an effective support to the troops in the 
Great Redoubt. 

Nor did General Buller succeed in bringing his battalions 
fe to the rescue. We saw that the 19th regiment had 

o support 3 ° ae . ° 
brought bythe Slipped from his control, and joined with Codring- 
two battalions ton’s brigade in storming the redoubt. The two 
ed under Bul- battalions which remained in his power were the 
nit 88th and the 77th Regiments. He was in person 
with the 88th, some way above the bank of the river; and the 
77th, under the orders of Colonel Egerton, was on the extreme 
left of the English infantry line. The 88th and the 77th were 
The cause of Not at this time under fire; but before them, at 
oe somewhat long distances, there were heavy col- 
umns of Russian infantry ; and the enemy’s horsemen, though 
not, it seems, visible at this moment, were known to be hover- 
ing on the left front of the English line. Buller, however, had 
not yet apprehended that the Russians were preparing any en- 
terprise against his left flank; and when he saw how matters 

' No less than seven of the officers serving with this battalion had acted as 
adjutants of the regiment, and to this circumstance the skill with which it 
was carried through the inclosures is in some measure ascribed. 

? For very good reasons, soldiers in marching are called upon to go straight 
through brooks and pools of water without picking their way. 

3 With the exception of one (the 2nd) company, commanded by Prince Ed- 
ward of Saxe-Weimar, which, happening to be near the bridge, filed over it. 


528 _ INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


stood in the redoubt, he rightly determined to advance at once 
with the two battalions which remained under his control. 
He therefore sent an order to Colonel Egerton, directing him 
at once to move forward with the 77th, and he himself pre- 
pared to advance at the same moment with the 88th. 

Colonel Egerton was a firm, able man, and he felt the mo- 
mentous importance of the duties attaching upon an officer 
who had charge of the extreme left of our infantry line; for it 
was obvious that a successful flank attack upon the one bat- 
talion which he commanded would bring into grievous jeop- 
ardy the whole array, English and French. The dips and hol- 
lows which marked the hill-side toward his left made it hard 
for him to see what the enemy was intending to do, and he 
failed to infer that the Czar’s renowned forces were really ab- 
staining from the enterprise which seemed to be alntost forced 
upon them by the nakedness of our left wing, and by their 
strength in the cavalry arm. At the moment when Buller’s 
order was brought to him, Colonel Egerton was so deeply im- 
pressed with a sense of the danger which he had to withstand 
in this part of the field, that—deliberately, and with a firmness 
which might have won him great praise, if the actual course 
of events had brought him his justification—he took upon him- 
self a grave burden. He took upon himself to say that, in the 
circumstances in which he stood, he ought not to obey the or- 
der. This answer the aid-de-camp carried back to General 
Buller. Buller was a near-sighted man ;! and being, it would 
seem, distrustful of what had been his own impression of the 
enemy’s attitude, he acquiesced in Colonel Egerton’s decision, 
allowed the 77th to remain where it was, and not only refrain- 
ed from advancing with the 88th, but threw the regiment into 
square, as though it were ahout to be attacked by cavalry. 


XXIV. 


So when the men of. Codrington’s force looked back to 
State of things Whence they came, and when also they looked to 
inthe Redoubt. their left rear, they saw they were alone— still 
alone—upon the hill-side. Then such of them as had the in- 
stinct of war began to understand that the blood of their com- 
rades had been shed in vain. 

For they were only clusters of men without the strength of 


' It has already been said that Sir George Brown, who commanded the 
Division, and Codrington, who commanded its Ist brigade, were both of them 
near-sighted. The Light Division was the force which had to feel and fight 
its way to the key of the position, and it was an error to allow it to be car- 
tied into action by three near-sighted generals. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 529 


order, and masses of infantry, in a perfect state of formation, 
were heavily impending over them. The columns which were 
the nearest to them were in the dip behind the redoubt, and 
Hizey so placed that, without any danger to them, a Rus- 
y on i : c 

thehigher Sian battery, which had been planted higher up on 
ere rouete to the side of the Kourgané Hill, could throw its fire 
bearonthe into the site of the redoubt. The guns of this bat- 
omer tery were soon brought to bear upon those of our 
soldiery who were within the redoubt; and this fire, after kili- 
ing and wounding several men, drove the rest to seek cover 
by betaking themselves to the outer side of the parapet. This 
movement, though it wanted the sanction of orders, was scarce- 
ly wrong or unsoldierly ; for, since the men were without for- 
mation, their duty became like the duty of skirmishers, and the 
parapet of the redoubt supplied that kind of shelter which the 
need of the moment demanded. Yet the movement looked 
like the beginning of a retreat, and Codrington strove to check 
it; for, being at the moment on the outside of the work, he 
for the second time put his horse at the parapet, and again en- 
tered the redoubt, with a hope that the men would follow him 
in once more. But this time his example was little observed ; 
for almost every man being driven, by want of formation, to 
rely upon his own means of making a stand, was busied with 
Our men lodge the work of settling himself down, as well as he 
themelves —_ could, for a stubborn defense; and it was plain (as 
parapet. Codrington himself had been showing the men some 
few minutes before) that the best ground for making a stand 
was the foot of the parapet, on its outer side. 

When good infantry soldiers, in the immediate presence of 
a powerful enemy, are disordered, but still undaunted, the 
slightest rudiment of a field-work is of infinite value to it, not 
simply nor chiefly on account of the shelter which it affords, 
but rather because it gives a base and nucleus for that coher- 
ence which is endangered by the want of formation. If our 
men, then lying or kneeling along the foot of the parapet, had 
been well covered at the flanks, it would have been their duty 
to hold the ground firmly against even a great body of infan- 
try attacking them in front. 

But on either flank, as well as in front of the lengthened 
crowd of English soldiery which lay clustering about the par- 
apet, the enemy’s masses were gathered. On their right rear 
there was the double battalion column of the Kazan corps, still 
engaged with the 7th Fusileers. On their left and left front 
there were the two remaining battalions of the Kazan corps, 
and the four battalions of the Scusdal corps; but in their im- 

Vou. L—Z 


530 ' INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuar. XLIV. 


The forees mediate front, and posted in the hollow behind 
gathered the redoubt, they had before them the four superb 
against them. attalions of the Vladimir Regiment. These forces 
were supported by the four battalions of the Ouglitz corps, 
which stood massed in one column on a higher slope of the 
Kourgané Hill. The two battalions of sailors also were in this 
part of the field; and, besides the battery which armed the 
lesser field-work, and the one which commanded the dismantled 
redoubt, there were two batteries of artillery held in reserve. 
Moreover, 3000 horsemen were close at hand on the enemy’s 
extreme right. Thus (omitting the Kazan column, which was 
occupied with the 7th Fusileers) there was impending over our 
2000 men, then kneeling or lying down by the parapet of the 
redoubt, a force of some 14,000 cavalry and infantry in a state 
of perfect formation, and supported by powerful batteries. 

And by this time there had sprung up amongst the Russian 
Wantike indie. LOfantry on the slopes of the Kourgané Hilla senti- 
nation of the ment of warlike indignation. Any Russian officer 
ity on the Who had been standing on ground high enough to 
Kourgand command a view of the river, must have seen that 
ee from the moment of their first onset on the left 
bank, the troops which stormed the redoubt were an isolated, 
and for the most part a disordered force; and even for some 
minutes after seeing them carry the work, he would be unable 
to make out that any supports moved up from the river were 
coming as yet to their aid. Naturally he would be shamed to 
think that many thousands of the once famous Russian infantry 
had been yielding up the Great Redoubt to a body which 
might almost be called a mere flush of skirmishers. Besides, 
it was known by this time in some of the Russian battalions 
that, of the pieces which had armed the redoubt, two were 
wanting, and to recover these there arose a burning desire. 
Unless the stain was to be lasting, it seemed clear that the red- 
coats still clinging to the dismantled redoubt must be driven 
at once down the hill. 

Without, it seems, receiving any orders from head-quarters, ’ 
Movement of OF from the divisional commander, the great column 
the Ouglitz formed of the Ouglitz battalions, and posted on the 
ai high ground above the redoubt, began to come 
swiftly down the hill; and for a few moments it came on, hot 
with zeal or anger, for the men of the front ranks fired vain, 
passionate shots whilst they marched, and young soldiers in 
the centre of the column kept shooting wildly into the air 
above them. ‘Soon, however, this body was halted.! 

* No mention is made of this movement in the Russian accounts, and I 


‘Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. - 533 


But it was in the great. Vladimir column that there sprang 
Advance ofthe UP the warlike spirit which was destined to bring 
Vladimir col- the foot soldiery of Russia and of England into a 
oo closer strife. The column, as we have seen, was a 
mass composed of the four battalions of the Vladimir corps ; 
and although it stood near to the English soldiery lying clus- 
tered along the outer'side of the parapet, still, since it was in 
the dip behind the rear of the earth-work, it could not be per- | 
fectly seen even by such of our men as might be standing up, 
and could not be seen at all by those who were lying down or 
kneeling. 

For the honor of having led this high-mettled column against 
English infantry, two men contend. From the time when 
Prince Mentschikoff rode off toward the sea, Prince Gortscha- 
koff had been left in command of the whole of the forces op- 
posed to the English; and General Kvetzinski, who command- 
ed the Division to which the Vladimir battalions belonged, 
was under Prince Gortschakoff’s orders. Each of these gen- 
erals says that (without knowing of the presence of the other) 
he gave orders for the advance ‘of the colnmn, and led it on in 
person. Their statements may perhaps be reconciled, for it is 
possible that Gortschakoff and Kvetzinski—the one riding with 
the left, the other with the right of the column—may have, 
both of them, done what they said they did. In that view of 
the matter, the coincidence would be accounted for by suppos- 
ing that the resolve of each of the two Generals sprang from 
the same cause—sprang from the warlike anger which was 
heaving the mass. I am, however, inclined to believe that 
Prince Gortschakoff is mistaken in his statement ;! and that 
the impulse which he gave to the Vladimir columns was after 
the movement now spoken of. Be this as it may, it is certain 
enough that—either alone, or jointly with Prince Gortschakoff 
—Kvetzinski led on the column. 

These troops of the 16th Division had been touched with 
the warlike fire which a patriot priesthood can draw from 
Gospels, Epistles, and Psalms. With the baggage of the Di- 
vision there was carried an image of the blessed Sergius; and 
when these troops were ordered to the south, the Archbishop 
of Moscow had taken care to whet them for the strife. ‘ Chil- 


imagine that it was a spontaneous movement soon stopped bv orders from 
some one in authority. 'The movement was observed by English officers so 
placed as to command a view of this part of the field, and if I am guilty of 
any error, it is the error of ascribing the movement to the wrong corps. 
1 I found this belief upon a comparison of Prince Gor tschakoff's state- 
ments with the.known facts. 


532 - ' INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. = [Cuar. XLIV- 


“dren of the Czar”—so ran the Primate’s blessing—“ Children 
“of the Czar our father, and Russia Sur mother, my warrior 
“brethren! The Czar, your country, the Christian faith, call 
“vou to great deeds, and the prayers of the Church and coun- 
“try are with you. . . . Should it be the will of God that you 
‘too face the foe, forget not that you are doing battle for the 
‘*most pious Czar, for our beloved country, for holy Church, 
‘‘against infidels, against persecutors of the Christian faith— 
‘“‘persecutors of men united to. us by ties of religion and of 
*“‘ blood—insulters of those who bow before the Holy Places, 
‘‘sanctified by the birth, passion, and ascension of Christ. 
‘‘ Blessing and honor to him who conquers! Blessing and 
‘‘happiness to him who, with faith in God, and love for his 
‘*‘ Czar and country, offers up his life as a sacrifice! It is writ- 
“ten in the Scriptures, concerning those of olden times who 
“fought for their country, ‘ By faith were kingdoms conquer- 
“¢¢ ed’? (Heb. xi., 33). Now by faith you too shall be conquer- 
“ors. Our most holy father Sergius whilome blessed our vic- 
‘‘torious war against the enemies of Russia. His image was 
“borne in your ranks in the days of the Emperor Alexis, of 
‘¢ Peter the Great, and finally in the great war against twenty 
‘nations in the reign of Alexander the First. That sacred 
‘form journeys with you also as a token of his fervent and be- 
“‘seeching prayers to God on your behalf. Take unto your- 
‘“‘selves, moreover, the triumphal war-cry of the Czar and 
** prophet David, ‘In God is my salvation and glory ! 2 

The Vladimir column came on. It moved slowly, as though 
it were held in by some kind of awe or doubt. Still it moved, 
and without firing a shot; for the orders were not to fire, but . 
to charge with the bayonet. Huge and gray, the mass crept 
gliding up the slope which divided it from our soldiery. | 

Our men, gathered round the parapet, were kneeling or ly- 
ing down; and, being thus low, they could not see into the 
dip which lay at a little distance before them. But mounted 
officers, of course, could see farther, and even men on foot (es- 
pecially those near to either flank of the redoubt), if they stood 
up for a moment to gain a wider view, could see a whole field 
of bayonet-points, ranged close as corn, and seeming to grow 
taller and taller. And though none of our men knew the 
strenoth of the column which was closing upon them, yet, 
sometimes from what he himself saw, but more commonly by 
hearsay, almost everyman came to know that, toward the part 
of the parapet where he lay, there was a mass of Russian sol- 
diery coming. 

1 Psalm li., 8; Eastern Papers, Part vii., p. 50. 


4 


Crap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 533 


Presently the head of the great Vladimir column approach- 
ed the crest; and our nen, whilst they lay with their rifles 
leveled across the parapet, and their eyes a little above its top, 
were face to face with the front rank of the mass. 

Before it confuses itself by hasty firing, a Russian column 
Aspect ofthe 1 good order is a solemn expression of warlike 
i ala strength. With the hard, upright outlines of a 
wall, it is, in its color, a dark cloud; and the lowly beings who 
compose it are so merged in the grand unity of the mass, that, 
in the hour of battle, the aspect of it weighs heavy upon the 
imagination of anxious men. More, a hundredfold more than 
it is it seems to portend; and now, when the Vladimir column, 
three thousand strong and withholding its fire, emerged in si- 
lence from the hollow, when it slowly grew over the crest and 
rose up, at last, stark and square between the eyes of our sol- 
diery and the light beyond, its power over the mind of a be- 
holder was less the power of a substance than of a shadow—a 
shadow approaching—the dim, mighty shadow that is thrown 
forward by a military empire when it comes in great earnest 
to the front. 

It is certain, however, that, whatever the cause be, some 
high quality of the soul, or only, after all, a certain hardness 
of temperament, our people in general are not impressed by 
the sight of massed infantry in the way that the nations of the 
Continent are; and, when our soldiers are formed in their En- 
glish array, they can make merry with a mere column as a 
thing that is foreign, a thing with vast pretensions to strength, 
but helpless as a flock of sheep against firm men standing in 
line. Even now, though our men lay in clusters without for- 
mation, they were ready enough to begin shooting into the col- 
umn; and those who first caught sight of the Russian helmets 
were going to deliver their fire, when suddenly they were 
checked by a voice which implored every man to stay his hand. 

When troops are about to be overpowered, confusing ru- 
Gonfusing rn. MOFS flit round them; and if it happen that these 
mors amongst rumors become the immediate causes of a default, 
oursoldiery- they do not for that reason excuse it, because the 
very spreading of such tales is not the cause, but the effect of 
the bewildered state into which the troops are lapsing. The 
Unauthentie Voice which had stayed the fire of our men was a 
orders and sig- voice crying out, ‘The column is French! the col- 
nalstothemen. «¢ mn jg French! Don’t fire, men! For God’s 
“sake, don’t fire!” The prohibition, repeated again and again, 
traveled fast along the line; and presently it was farther im- 
pressed, for a bugler of the 19th, under orders from a mount 
ed officer, began to sound the “ oe firing.” 


534 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA’ [Cuar. XLIV» 


Our men, obeying the voice and the signal, withheld their 
fire and remained still. The belief that the column must be 
French was confirmed—and, indeed, it is likely- that it had 
been caused—by observing that it delivered no fire; and al- 
though, if Kvetzinski’s. statements be accurate, the fr ont rank 
men had their muskets brought down as though for a charge 
with the bayonet,! still the slow, formal movement of the ap- 
pr oaching mass was so little like what the English regard as a 

‘charge,’ "that no one seems to have accounted for the silence 
of their firelocks by suggesting that the movement was intend- 
ed for an attack with the bayonet, It seems that the column 
now halted,? as if from a suspicion of some snare, or perhaps 
from a dread of the unknown, for the men of the column could 
not see the stature of our men, but they saw forage-caps and 
a crowd of English faces of a fresh-colored hue very strange 
to their eyes, and they saw the muzzles of rifles leveled thick- 
ly across the parapet. From mistake on one side, and mis- 
giving on the other, there had come to be a strange pause. 
Yet not along the whole line; for, either with a part of the 
Vladimir column, or else with some other body of troops, two 
or three of the companies of the 33rd -were exchanging, at this 
time, a sharp fire. Obeying the light, simple motive which 
sometimes governs the soldier when his mind is a blank, the 
men of the column took the fancy of pouring the main volume 
of their shot toward the ground where the colors of the 33rd 
were upraised. The colors were new; and, as though the 
mere richness of their crimson folds were enough to draw the 
eye and the aim of the Russian musketeer, they were riddled, 
in two or three minutes, with numbers of balls. Of those who 
stood near them, a large proportion were struck down.’ 

Codrington, seeing that the fruits of the exploit performed 
by his brigade were going to be lost for want of supports, had 
already sent his aid-de-camp, Campbell, to press the advance 
of the Scots Fusileer Guards, the battalion most directly in his 


1 His expression, as rendered from the Russian into French, is ‘‘l’arme au 
‘‘bras, prete a la baionette."" This, I suppose, must mean that the front rank 
men had their bayonets ‘‘ at the charge,” and’ not merely ‘‘at the trail.” 

* The Russian accounts do not speak of this halt. They represent the 
whole advance of the column as a bayonet charge, and it seems quite true 
that the column really withheld its fire, but it would be a mistake to suppose 
that the forward movement of this body was marked with any of the swift- 
ness or violence commonly associated with the idea of a “‘ charge.” 

5 J do not see’ any thing in the Russian narratives which I can identify with 
the combat in which a part of the 33rd was engaged, and I have not been 
able to say which of the Russian corps it was with which the 38rd was at 
this time exchanging fire, 


Cuar. XLIV ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 535 


rear. But the very moments then passing were the moments 
charged with the result, and there were no other and later 
moments that could ever be used in their stead. 

It is said—but my faith in men’s impressions of what passed 
at this minute is wanting in strength—it is said that one of 
the heavy columns which the enemy had on his extreme right 
was now seen to be marching upon the left flank of the English 
soldiery who lay clustered along the parapet of the redoubt,! 
and it seems there are grounds for believing that the left of our 
line was the spot where a conviction of the necessity of retir- 
ing was first acted upon. According to testimony which seems 
to be trustworthy, a mounted officer? rode up to the bugler of 
the 19th Regiment, and ordered him to sound the “ retire.” 
das The man obeyed, and buglers along the whole line, 
sounde the ‘re- from left to right, took up and repeated the signal. 

But the instinct of self-preservation, no less than 
_ the natural courage and tenacity of the soldier, made almost 
every man of the force very unwilling to abandon the ground ; 
The troopshad for it happened that at this time a brisk shower of 
a double mo- missiles was passing over the heads of our men 
mainingwhere Without doing them harm, and hearing how thickly 
they were. —_ the balls were raining into the ground behind them, 
they knew that a retreat would not only be an abandonment 
of ground dearly won, but also would bring them at once un- 
der a heavy fire. So strong was their conviction of the expe- 
diency of holding fast to the ground where they lay, that the 
sounding of the “retire” was believed to have originated in 
some error; and in order that they might determine what 
should be done, the officers of several regiments, but more 
especially of the 23rd, gathered into a group and began to con- 
sult together. . Being firm, proud men, with a great self-re- 
spect, they did not, it seems, like to crouch for shelter under 
the parapet whilst they were exchanging counsel; so they 
Conference of conferred standing upright, but under so thick a 
officers at the flight of balls that several—nay, they say almost all 


parapet. ‘ 
Their fate. of them, were struck down and killed.2 However, 


1 The Russian accounts do not confirm this belief. 

2 Afterward the bugler described the officer in a way which might have 
enabled a court of inquiry to identify him. He was not an officer of the 
regiment to which the bugler belonged, and he was not a general officer ; 
and he did not deliver the order as coming from any one other than himself. 
The incident goes far to justify the opinion of officers who think that (unless 
it is strictly confined to the business of guiding skirmishers) the use of a bugle 
during an action is dangerous. 

3 I shall presently give the names of the officers who were killed in the 
23rd, and the other regiments which stormed the redoubt; but I can not un- 


536 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


those who survived continued to say that the sounding of the 
“retire” must have been a mistake, and that the force ought 
to hold its ground. ‘ 

But then again, and from the same quarter as before, a bugle 
The ‘retire ‘Sounded the “retire ;” and again, as before, the sig- 
againsounded. yal was taken up along the line. The repetition of 
the signal seemed to make it almost certain that the order ~ 
must be authentic, but the troops were yet slow to persuade 
themselves that this was the case, and they still lingered at the 
parapet. Then a sergeant of the 23rd, standing upright in or- 
der to make himself better heard, told the men that they had 
twice heard the “retire” sounded, and that they must do their 
duty and obey. Whilst he spoke he was shot down and killed. 
Our soldiery But it was now judged by officers and men that a 
retreat from signal twice made, and twice carried on along the 
the Redoubt. Tine from regiment to regiment, was not to be neg- 
lected. The retreat began; and the men, quitting the shelter 
of the breastwork, fell back into open ground, and incurred 
the fire which was pelting into the slope beneath. 

As the advance had been; so also the retreat was for the 
most part without order, but for the most part also it was not 
hurried. Our soldiers, in their retreat, took care to ply the en- 
emy with fire; and they picked up and carried off with them 
those of our wounded officers and men whom they found lying 
wounded on the slope. Except in one place, the retreat was 
like the movement of skirmishers when they find themselves 
recalled to their battalions by sound of bugle. But a part of 
the retreating force, consisting mainly of the 23rd and the 
95th, got heaped together in an unwieldy crowd, and became, 
as will be presently seen, the cause of a fresh disaster. 

The enemy might have inflicted heavy loss upon the clusters 
of our soldiery then retreating down the slope, but there was 
some spell which bound him; for when the Vladimir column 
had moved forward as far as the parapet of the breastwork, it 
used a strange abstinence and halted, attempting no movement 
in pursuit. Of the two missing pieces of ordnance which the’ 
enemy had yearned to. recover, one, they found, had disap- 
peared,’ and the other (the howitzer) was lying on the ground 
dertake to say which of them fell at this time. In general it seems to be. 
almost beyond the power of human testimony to fix the time and the spot at 
which an officer falls when he is killed in battle. The difficulty is occasion- 
ed—not by the dearth, but by the vast abundance of testimony—testimony 
all seeming to be perfectly trustworthy, yet strangely contradictory. It will 
be seen, however, that the number of officers killed in the 23rd was very 


great, and there is an impression that no small proportion of them met their 
death in the way above stated. ’ This was the gun taken by Captain Bell. 


Cuar.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 537 


dismounted, and was so unwieldy that Kvetzinski says his 
Vladimir men were unable to drag it away. It remained in 
the redoubt. 

At the moment when this retreat began, the 1st Division had 
not yet emerged from the cover afforded by the river’s bank ; 
but General Codrington’s message hurried thesforward move- 
ment of the Scots Fusileer Guards. The battalion climbed to 
the summit of the bank, formed line, and advanced. 

But whilst this battalion moved forward, the remnant of the 
men who had stormed the redoubt were coming down the hill, 
and some of them were huddled in a throng, and bearing to- 
ward the left companies of the Scots Fusileer Guards. There- 
fore the Scots Fusileer Guards received in their advance much 
of the fire directed against our retreating soldiery, and many 
were struck down; still the onward movement was maintained, 
and the Grenadiers on the right, and the Coldstreams on the 
left of this battalion were now also moving up. But at last 
the advancing line of the Scots Fusileers and the crowd de- 
scending from the redoubt came into bodily contact, and this 
so roughly, that the retreating crowd, by its sheer weight, 
broke through the left companies ofthe Scots Fusileers and 
destroyed their formation. The weight ofthe retreating throng 
at that one spot was so great and so unwieldy, that a soldier 
of the Scots Fusileers was thrown, it is said, to the ground, and 
got his ribs fractured. The left companies of the Scots Fusil- 


_ eer Guards, being thrust out of line by physical pressure, fell 


back in disorder. 

At a later moment, some of the men who were retreating, 
but retreating in less heavy clusters, came down upon the 
Grenadier Guards. The Grenadiers neatly opened their ranks 
for the discomfited soldiery, and afterward formed up again, 
soon recovering their perfect array. 

During this conflict, the four regiments which stormed the 
Losses of the redoubt had undergone cruel slaughter. In the 
SS pail 23rd Regiment, besides Colonel Chester, Wynn, 


which stormed 


the work. Evans, Conolly, Radcliffe, Young, Anstruther, and 


Butler, and 3 sergeants, were killed; and Campbell, Hopton, 


Bathurst, Sayer,! and Applethwaite, and 9 sergeants, were 
wounded. Of the rank and _ file, 40 were killed and 139 
wounded. 

In the 33rd, Lieutenant Montague and 3 sergeants were 
killed; and Colonel Blake, Major Gough, Captain Fitzgerald, 
Wallis, Worthington, Siree, and Greenwood, and 16 sergeants 

* Sayer was one of those struck down by that salvo-like discharge which 


preceded the dismantling of the redoubt. 
Z 2 


538 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuap. XLIV. 


were wounded.' Of the rank and file, 52 were killed and 172 
were wounded. 

In the 95th, Dowdall, Eddington, the* younger Eddington, 
Polhill, Kingsley, Braybrooke, and 3 sergeants, were killed ; 
and Hume, Reyland, Wing, Sargent, Macdonald, Gerard, Bray- 
brooke, Brooke, Boothby, Bazalgette, Gordon, and 12 sergeants, 
were wounded. Of the rank and file, 42 were killed and 116 
wounded. 

In the 19th, Stockwell and Wardlow were killed ; and Car- 
dew, Saunders, M‘Gee, Warden, and Currie, and 4 sergeants, 
wounded. Of the rank and file, 839 were killed and 170 
wounded, 

In the Rifles there were 11 killed and 38 wounded, and most 
of those casualties occurred in the left wing. So, of the four 
line battalions and the four companies of Rifles which had 
stormed the redoubt, there was a loss, in killed and wounded, 
of about 100 officers and sergeants, and 800 men. 


XXV. 

But what was the spell which bound the Ozar’s command- 
Cause which eS? and why did they throw back the gifts which 
paralyzed the seemed to be brought them by the fortune of bat- 

uss1ans 1n 
the’midst of tle ? 
Ba When our storming force under Codrington was 
ascending the glacis in a crowd—in a crowd torn through and 
through by grape and canister—how came it that the enemy 
could “suddenly make up his mind to stop the Tae OE and 
dismantle his Great Redoubt? 

When the remnant of our storming force was flocking back 
down the hill, why did the enemy spare from destroying it, 
and bring to a halt his triumphant Vladimir column ? 

Having several thousands of troops between the Causeway 
and the Kourgané Hill, why did the Russian Generals suffer 
Lacy Yea still to keep his stand on open ground with one dis- 
ordered battalion ? 

We saw that when Mentschikoff, disturbed by the report of 
Bosquet’s flank movement, rode off in great haste toward the 
sea, Prince Gortschakoff was left in command of all that part of 
the Russian army which confronted the English.” Kvetzinski, 

1 Colonel Blake would not report his wound, lest the account should alarm 
his wife and family. °. His horse was struck in three places. Siree, though 
badly wounded, insisted upon remaining out on the hill-side all night, in or- 
der that men in a worse condition should be first attended to. Wallis was 
badly wounded, but he tied a handkerchief round the place, and remained 
with his regiment to the close of the battle. Worthington died from the am- 
putation which was necessitated by the wound he received. | 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 539 


the brave and able general who commanded the division on the 
Kourgané Hill, was nnder the orders of Prince Gortschakoff, 
and as long as the absence of the commander-in-chief was pro- 
tracted, Gortschakoff was the officer who had to answer for 
the defense of the Pass and of the Whole position thence ex- 
tending to the extreme right of the Russian army. Every part 
of the ground thus committed to Prince Gortschakoff’s care 
was precious, but the Kourgané Hill was the key of the whole 
position on the Alma. There, and there only, the ground had 
been intrenched. There, and there only, heavy guns had been 
planted. That barren hill had become the very gage for which 
the Great Powers of the West and the Czar of All the Russias 
were to join in a strife computed to last many days. . Prince 
Mentschikoff himself had so judged it. Establishing his head- 
quarters on the slope overlooking the Great Redoubt, and so 
disposing his troops that, whilst standing there, he could exer- 
cise an immediate personal control over more than two thirds 
of his whole force, he had intended that every movement of 
this part of the field should be under his own eyes. It might 
well be deemed certain that any one of Prince Mentschikoff’s 
lieutenants, intrusted during the absence of his general with 
this great charge, would be tenacious of the ground. As a 
general in high command, he would act upon the knowledge 

that the hill was vital to the whole position. As an officer. 
commanding troops placed in a fortified work, he would be 
taught by the punctilio of his profession to hold his intrench- 
ments, even at great sacrifice, until the weight of his charge 
should be taken from him by an order from the commander of. 
the forces. 

But there was a whim of the Emperor Nicholas which tend- 
ed to weaken and disperse the authority of any man in com- 
mand of his army. Longing always to make Wellington an 
example for his generals, but mistaking o the gist of the saying 
that “the Duke never lost a gun,’ > Nicholas gave his com- 
manders to understand that the loss of a piece of ordnance 
would be likely to bring them into disgrace.!| The result of 
such an intimation was just what a more sagacious prince 
would have easily foreseen. The commander “who received 


‘ The sense in which it can be said that Wellington ‘‘never lost a gun,” 
has been referred to in a former note. ‘The fact of the Duke never having 
lost a gun in action is a superb and summary proof that his career was un- 
checker ed by the loss of a battle; but his avoidance of the loss of guns was 
not the cause, but the effect and the proof of his ascendency in war. The 
Duke would have scorned the notion of risking the loss of a battle for the 
sake of keeping his guns safe. 


540 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


the warning took good care to hand it down—to hand it all 
down the steps of the military hierarchy; and every general of 
division, every brigadier, nay, every artillery officer who com- 
manded a battery, was evidently made to understand that, 
happen what might, he must not lose a gun. In other words, 
every such officer, rather than run the risk of losing a gun, 
was empowered to resolve upon the abandonment of a fortified 
position, and even to Gommence a retreat, which might carry 
with it the retreat of the whole army. 

It was, therefore, very natural that the anxiety which had 
seized upon the mind of Prince Mentschikoff should not only 
extend to Prince Gortschakoff and to General Kvetzinski, but 
also to the artillery officers who commanded the Causeway 
batteries and the guns in the Great Redoubt. Now, from the 
moment when Prince Mentschikoff rode off toward the sea, he 
had never reappeared in the Pass or on the Kourgané Hill, he 
had sent no good tidings, and apparently had dispatched no 
orders or directions of any kind.! With every moment the 
just grounds for alarm were increasing, and when the fore- 
most division of the British army sprang to their feet and rap- 
idly advanced along their whole line, the Russian generals and 
commanders of batteries had to cast in their minds and see 
how far their desire to hold fast a position very precious to 
the army and to the honor of the empire could be made to 
consist with the absolute safety of a few pieces of ordnance. 
They were about to be assailed by the English army. But 
this was not all they had to look for. The continued deten- 
tion of Prince Mentschikoff in that part of the position which 
confronted the French gave ground for the fear that an evil 
crisis must there be passing. The fear would be that Bos- 
quet’s turning movement against the Russian left was produc- 
ing its full effect, and that the tide of war, rolling up along the 
line of the Russian position, had set in from west to east. 

If men were filled with this dread—a dread well justified by 
inference fairly drawn at the time, though not by actual facts 
—it would be to the Telegraph Height that they would bend 
their inquiring eyes, and there they would gaze with minds 
prepared to learn that the French, marching eastward, had 
doubled up the Russian left wing, and were coming to ground 
from which they would look down triumphantly into the flank 
of the Causeway batteries. Suddenly, to men thus expectant 


'T think I might have almost ventured to leave out the ‘‘ apparently ;” 
for, althongh the narratives of Gortschakoff and Kvetzinski do not in terms 
declare that they received no orders, the tenor of their statements is all but 
equivalent to actual assertion. . 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 541 


of a dreaded calamity, there was presented a sight well fitted 
to confirm their worst fears—nay, even to make them imagine 
that the whole tenor of their duty was changed. For one of 
the high knolls jutting up from the eastern slopes of the Tele- 
graph Height, and closely overlooking the Russian reserves, 
became crowded all at once with a gay-looking group of horse- 
_ men, whose hats and white plumes showed that 

pparition of 2 : 
horsemen ona they were staff officers. What made the appari- 
knoll inthe tion seem the more fatal was that it was deep in 
Russian posi- the very heart of the Russian lines, and even some- 
Sis what near to the ground where Prince Mentschikoff 
had posted his reserves. It could be seen that the horsemen 
wore coats of dark blue. They were exactly on the ground 
where the van of the French army might hope to be if it had 
achieved a signal victory over the left wing of the Russian 
army. It was hardly to be imagined possible that the Allies 
could have a numerous staff in that part of the field without 
being there in great strength. Even a tranquil and cautious 
observer of the apparition could hardly have failed to infer 
that the French, carrying all before them, had marched through 
and through from west to east, and made good their way into 
the centre—nay, almost into the rear of the Russian position. 
Oppressed by this belief, Russian officers would be led to think 
that if they stood bound to provide against the possibility of 
losing their guns, the time they had for saving them was be- 
ginning to run very short. 

The divisional general who was in command on the Kour- 
gané Hill does not allege that he had any authority from 
Prince Gortschakoff or from the commander of the forces to 
remove the guns which armed the Great Redoubt. What he 
says is that the defeat of the Kazan battalions by the English 
troops left the battery exposed, and necessitated its withdraw- 
al.1 General Kvetzinski, however, was the master of sixteen 
prime battalions, of which twelve were at this time untouched. 


' This is what Kvetzinski says :—‘ During this time masses of English 
‘troops were directing their steps toward the regiment of the Grand-Duke 
‘Michael (the ‘‘ Kazan” regiment). The batteries of our-first lines began 
‘firing violently. Shells and missiles worked their bloody way through the 
‘lines of the enemies, but they immediately re-formed their lines, and under 
‘cover of a strong line of bayonets, and their battery then standing behind 
‘the smoking ruins of Bourliouk, they hastened to force their way over the 
‘ford in order to reach the breastwork. The ‘‘ Kazan” regiment bravely met 
‘them, but, tormented by the destroying fire of the enemy, and having lost a 
‘frightful amount of men, was obliged to give way under the superior num- 
‘bers of the enemy. The battery, being thus left exposed, was obliged to 
‘move.’ 


542 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. . [Cuap. XLIV 


At the time when the order must have been given for the re- 
moval of the guns, the defeat which one of his ‘ Kazan’ col- 
umns had sustained was nothing which, in the eyes of a man 
so firm as he was, would seem to justify despair! Yet to re- 
move these guns was to abandon the key of the. position on 
the Alma. It is hard to imagine that Kvetzinski could have 
brought himself to take such a step without trying resistance, 
unless he had been in some measure governed by an inculcated 
dread of losing guns, and also by what he wrongly imagined 
to be the state of the battle on the other side of the Causeway. 
Be this as it may, it is certain that within some fifteen minutes 
from the time when the horsemen were first seen on the knoll 
the Great Redoubt was dismantled. 

The riders whose sudden appearance on the knoll thus 
scared and misled the enemy were a group of perhaps eight- 
een or twenty Englishmen. How came it that they were sit- 
ting unmolested in their saddles, and contentedly adjusting 
their field-glasses in the heart of the Russian position ? 

At the time when Lord Raglan dispatched to his leading di- 
inns visions the final order to advance, he was riding be- 
which Lord | tween the French and the English armies, and was 
Raglan toot. close to a road or track which led down toward a 
edthe advance ford below the burning village. Impelled by his 
ofhisinfantty: desire for a clear view of the coming struggle, and 
guided only by Fortune or by the course of the track, he rode 
down briskly into the valley, followed close by his staff, but 
leaving our troops in his rear. He soon reached, soon passed 
through the vineyards, and gained the bank of the river. 

The stream at this spot flowed rapidly, breaking against a 
mass of rock, which so far dammed it back as to form on the 
upper side of it a pool about four feet deep. One of the staff 
rode into the stream at that point, and his horse nearly lost 
his footing. Lord Raglan, almost at the same moment, took 
the river on the right or lower side of the rock, and crossed it 
without any trouble. Though he was parted at this time from 
his own troops, there were several French soldiers near him. 
They were a part of the chain of skirmishers which covered 
the left flank and left front of Prince Napoleon’s Division. 
They seemed to be engaged with some of the enemy’s sharp- 
shooters, whom they were able to discern through the foliage ; 


1 Up to the time when Kvetzinski dismantled the Redoubt, the only defeat 
which the “Kazan corps had sustained was the one inflicted upon two of its 
battalions by the 19th Regiment and the left companies of the 23rd. See 
ante. The defeat of the other two battalions—the battalions engaged with 
Lacy Yea—had not then occurred. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 543 


for they were sheltering themselves behind vineyard walls, 
watching moments for firing, and receding in order to load, or 
cautiously peering forward. They looked surprised when Lord 
Raglan, with the group which followed him, rode down and 
passed them. More than one of them, sagacious and curious, 
paused in his loading, and stood.gazing, with ramrod half 
down, as though he were trying to make out how it accorded 
with the great science of war that the English Generel and 
his staff should be riding through the skirmishers, and enter- 
ing, without his battalions, into the midst of the enemy’s do- 
minions. . 

Though they were unseen by our officers, the Russian sharp- 
shooters, who had been exchanging shots with the French ri- 
flemen, were not far away. Of this they gave proof. Leslie 
dropped out of his saddle and fell to the ground. His startled 
horse making a move much as though he were blundering: at 
a grip, the fall seemed at first sight like a fall in hunting; but 
a rifle ball had entered Leslie’s shoulder. Nearly at the same 
time Weare, another of the staff, was struck down. There was 
not a heavy fire, but the Russian sharpshooters had been pa- 
tiently dueling with the French skirmishers, and, of course, 
when they saw Lord Raglan and his plumed followers, they 
seized the occasion for easier shooting, and tried to bring down 
two or three of the gay cavalcade. 

After gaining the left bank of the river, Lord Raglan at first 
got parted from most of those who had followed him, for he 
took a track into a kind of gulley toward his right, and there 
for a moment he had no one very near him except one man, 
who had crossed the stream next after him; for the rest of the , 
horsemen, when they reached the dry ground, had borne rath- 
er toward their left. Some one, however, from that quarter 
cried out, “‘ This seems a better way, my lord,” and Lord Rag- 
lan, then turning, rejoined the rest of the staff, and took the 
path recommended. I do not know who the officer was who 
advised this road. He has possibly forgotten the counsel which 
he gave; but if he remembers it, and sees how the issue was 
governed by taking the path which he chose, he may suffer 
himself to trace the gain of a battle, with all its progeny of 
events, to his few hurried words. 

The brown bay Lord Raglan rode was of course well broken 
to fire, and he had been quiet enough during the earlier part 
of the action; but now, suddenly, his blood rose, and for all 
the rest of the day he was so eager that he would hardly suffer 
his rider to use a field-glass from the saddle. The truth is, 
that in other times he had been ridden to hounds in England, 


5A4 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. —[(Cuap. XLIV. 


and, although he had long stood careless of all that was done 
by the Causeway batteries, yet when he and his rider and the 
horsemen around him cantered down into the valley—when 
they plunged into the river—when they briskly dashed through 
it, and began to gallop up the steep, broken ground on the Rus- 
sian side, the old hunter seemed to think of the chase and great 
days in the Gloucestershire country. 

But it was not “Shadrach”? alone who felt the onward im- 
pulse. They say that there lurks in the men of these isles a 
vestige of Man the Hunter and Man the Savage, and that this, 
after all, is the subtle leaven which, in spite of the dangerous 
inroads of luxury, still keeps alive the warlike spirit of the peo- 
ple, and the freedom which goes along with it. It was not 
right—nay, if it were not that success brings justification, it 
would have been scarcely pardonable—that a general, charged 
with the care of an army, should be under the guidance of 
feelings akin to the impulses of the chase; but what one has 
to speak of is not of what ought to have been, but what was. 
By the stir and joyous animation of the moment Lord Raglan 
was led on into a part of the field which he would not have 
sought to reach in cold blood. He would have regarded as 
nothing the mere difference between the risk of being struck 
by shot in one part of the field and the risk of being struck by 
shot in another; but he knew that in general it is from a point 
more or less in rear of battalions actually engaged that a chief 
can exercise the most constant and the most extended control 
over his army; and an ideal commander would not suffer him- 
self to ride to so forward a spot as to run the risk of losing 
-the government of his troops for many minutes together in the 
critical period of an action; but the horseman who now rode 
his hunter across the valley of the Alma and indulgently gave 
him his head was not an ideal personage, but a man of flesh 
and blood, with many very English failings. ‘Avant tout je 
suis gentilhomme Anglais,” was the preface of the fierce mes- 
sage sent by the then foremost man of the world to the king 
of France,’ and certainly in the nature of that “ gentilhomme 
Anglais” the willfulness is so firmly set that no true sample 
of the breed can be altered, and altered down to suit a pattern. 
The state must dispense with his services or take him as he is, 

Body and soul, Lord Raglan was so.made by nature that, 
though he knew how to be prudent enough in the orders he 
gave to officers at a distance, yet, when he was in the saddle, 


1 The name of the horse. 
? To Louis the XVIIIth in the summer of 1815, shortly after his second 
restoration. 


— 


Cuap. XLIV.]. INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 545 


directing affairs in person, and there came to be a question be- 
tween holding back and going forward, his blood always used 
to get heated, and, like his great master, he had so often been 
happy in his choice of time for running a venture, that his spirit 
had never been cowed. Having once begun to ride forward, 
he did not restrain himself. And surely there was a great fas- 
cination to draw him on. The ground was of such a kind that 
with every stride of his charger a fresh view was opened to 
him. For months and months he had failed to tear off the 
veil which hid from him the strength of the army he under- 
took to assail; and now, suddenly in the midst of a battle, he 
found himself suffered to pass forward between the enemy’s 

ceutre and his left wing. As at Badajoz, in old times, he had 
galloped alone to the drawbridge and obtained the surrender 
of St. Christoval, so now, driven on by the same hot blood, he 
joyously rode without troops into the heart of the enemy’s 
position; and Fortune, still enamored of his boldness, was 
awaiting him with her radiant smile. For the path he took 
led winding up—by a way rather steep and rough here and 
there, but easy enough for saddle-horses—and presently in the 
front, but some way off toward the left, he saw before him a 
high, commanding knoll, and, strange to say, there seemed to 
be no Russians near it. Instantly, and before he reached the 
high ground, he saw the prize and divined its worth. He was 
swift to seize it. Without stopping—nay, even, one almost may 
say, without breaking the stride of his horse, he turned to Ai- 
rey, who rodé close at his side, and ordered him to bring up 
Adams’s brigade with all possible speed. Then, still pressing 
on and on, the foremost rider of the allied armies, he gained 
the summit of the knoll. 

I know of no battle in which, whilst the forces of his adver- 
Lord Raglan’s Sy were still upon their ground, and still unbroken, 
position on the a general has had the fortune to stand upon a spot 
Kg SO ~ commanding as that which Lord Raglan now 
found on the summit of the knoll. The truth is, that the Rus- 
sian commander had not troops enough to occupy the whole 
position, and the part which he neglected was, happily, that 
very one into which Lord Raglan had ridden. Duri ing the 
earlier part of the day a battalion had been posted in the ravine. 
close under the knoll; but, in an evil hour for the Czar, the 
battalion had been removed,'! and the enemy having no other 
troops in the immediate neighbor hood, and having no guns in 
battery which commanded the summit of the knoll, the English 


1 The No. 1 Taroutine battalion, Chodasiewicz. 


546" INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuap. XLIV.. 


General, though as yet he had no troops with him, stood un- 
molested in the heart of the enemy’s position—stood between 
that wing of the Russian army which confronted the French, 
and that much larger portion of it which confronted the En- 
glish, but so far in advance as to be actually in the close neigh- 
borhood of the Russian reserves. The knoll was not, indeed, 
so situated as to command a distant view toward our right, 
and the view toward the front was obstructed by the features 
of the ground ; but, looking to his left, or, in other words, look- 
ing eastward and up the valley of the river, Lord Raglan com- 
manded nearly the whole ground destined to be the scene of 
the English attack.! ° 

But more; he looked upon that part of the Russian army 
which confronted ours; he saw it in profile; he saw down into 
the flank of the Causeway batteries which barred the mouth 
of the Pass; and beyond, he saw into the shoulder of the Great 
Redoubt, then about to be stormed by Codrington’s brigade.” 
Above all, he saw, drawn up: with splendid precision, the bodies 
of infantry which the enemy held in reserve. They were 
massed in two columns.? The formation of each mass looked 
close and perfect as though it had been made of marble, and 
cut by rule and plumb-line.. These troops, being in reserve, 
were of course some way in rear of the enemy’s batteries and 
his foremost. battalions; but they were only 900 yards from 
the eye of the English General; for it was Lord Raglan’s 
strange and happy destiny to have ridden almost into the rear 
of the position, and to be almost as near to the enemy’s re- 
serves as he was to the front of their array. 


ae 
a 
Russian reserves. th og 
J i) 3 
Causeway (= 8 s 
% as batteries. gre a 0 
x teres 
aaa | © 
Bulk of Russian Army. | 0 
English Army. French Army. 


All this—now told with labor of words—Lord Raglan saw 
at a glance, and at the same moment he divined the fatal per- 
turbation which would be inflicted upon the enemy by the 


7. e., that attack the first stages of which have been already described. 

® As already narrated. It will be remembered that Codrington’s brigade 
was joined in the storming by the 19th and 95th Regiments. 

° See former note as to the probable number of the troops in these col- 
umns, and the corps to which they belonged. 


Cuap. XLIV:} INVASION OF THE CRIMEA; 547 


mere appearance of our Head-Quarter staff in this part of the 
field. The knoll, though much lower than the summit of the 
Telegraph Height, stood out bold and plain above the Pass. 
It was clear that even from afar the enemy would make out 
that it was crowned by a group of plumed officers; and Lord 
Raglan’s imagination being so true and so swift as to gift him 
with the faculty of knowing how in given circumstances other 
men must needs be thinking and feeling, it hardly cost him a 
moment to infer that this apparition of a few horsemen on the 
spur of a hill was likely to govern the enemy’s fate. It would 
not, he thought, occur to any Russian general that fifteen or 
twenty staff officers, whether French or English, could have 
reached the knoll without having thousands of troops close at 
hand. The enemy’s generals w ould therefore infer that a lar ge 
proportion of the Allied force had won its way into the heart 
of the Russian position. This was the view which Lord Rag-— 
Jan’s mind had seized when, at the very moment of crowning 
the knoll, he looked round and said,‘ Our presence here will 
‘have the best effect.’ Then, glancing down as he spoke into 
the flank of the Causeway batteri ies, and carrying his eye round 
Lord Rastan 10 the enemy’s infantry reserves, Lord Raglan said, 
glan 
desiresto have ‘ Now, if we had a couple of guns here !! 
AS ee His wish was instantly seized by Colonel Dick- 
up tothetop son? and one or two other officers. They rode off 
ofthe Knoll. in all haste. 

The rest of the group which had followed Lord Raglan re- 
mained with him upon the summit of the knoll, and every one, 
facing eastward and taking out his glass, began to scan the 
ground destined to be assailed by the English troops. 

The Light Division had not then begun to emerge from the 
thick ground and the channel of the river; but presently some 
small groups, and afterward larger gatherings of the red-coats 
appeared upon the top of the river’s bank on the Russian side, 
and at length—seen in profile by Lord Raglan—there began 
the tumultuous onset of Codrington’s brigade against the 
Great Redoubt.? 

Lord Raglan knew that the distance between him and the 
Meantimehe scene of the struggle at the redoubt was too great 
vices ofthe tO allow of his then tampering with it; for any or- 
battle. der that he might send would lose its worth in the 
journey, and tend to breed confusion. And it was not in his 


: 
' T heard him say so, and say so immediately upon crowning the knoll. 
* Colonel Dickson of the Artillery. It was the happy accident of his be- 
ing with Lord Raglan as chief of the staff of interpreters which gave him the 
opportunity of rendering the services narrated in the text. 3 See ante. 


548 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cnar. XEIV. 


way to assuage his impatience by making impotent efforts. 
Nor would he even give vent to his feeling by words or looks 
disclosing vexation. He had so great a power of preventing 
his animal spirits from drooping that no one could see in his 
glowing countenance the faintest reflection of the sight which 
his eyes took in. His manner all the time was the manner of 
a man enlivened by the progress of a great undertaking with- 
out being robbed of his leisure. He spoke to me, I remember, 
about his horse. He seemed like a man who had a clew of his 
own, and knew his way through the battle. 

Watching the onslaught of Codrington’s brigade, Lord Rag- 
lan had seen the men ascend the slope and rush up over the 
parapet of the Great Redoubt. Then moments, then whole 
minutes—precious minutes—elapsed, and he had to bear the 
anguish of finding that the ground where he longed to see the 
supports marching up was still left bare. Then—a too snre- 
result of that default—he had to see our soldiery relinquishing 
their capture and retreating in clusters down the hill. 

Moreover, at that moment affairs were going ill with the 
French. The appearance of our head-quarters on the knoll 
had been marked by our Allies as well as by the enemy; for 
AFrenchaia. OW & French aid-de-camp, in great haste, came 
de-ceamponthe Climbing up the knoll to seek Lord Raglan. He 
mp seemed to be in a state of grievous excitement; but 
perhaps it was the violence of his bodily exertion which gave 
him this appearance, for he had quitted his horse in order the 
better to mount the steep, and he rushed up bareheaded to 
Lord Raglan, but so breathless from his exertions that for a 
moment. he could hardly articulate; and when he spoke, he 
spoke panting. He persisted in remaining uncovered. What 
he came to ask was that Lord Raglan would give 
some support to the French; and as a ground for 
the demand, he urged that the French were hardly pressed 
by the enemy. ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘my Lord, my Lord, we 
have before us eight battalions!" One ‘could see, or imagine 
that one saw, what was passing in Lord Raglan’s mind. He 
was pained by thinking that, either from mental excitement or 
from the violence of his bodily exertion, the officer should seem 
discomposed ; but what tormented him most was the sight of 
the young man standing bareheaded, for to tell him to be coy- 
ered would be to assume that the bared head was an obeisance 
Lord Raglan's Meant to be rendered to himself. Bending in his 
way with him. saddle, Lord Raglan turned kindly round toward 


_ |! ¢Milord, milord, nous avons devant nous huit bataillons.’ I heard him 
say those words. 


His mission. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 549 


his right—toward the side of his maimed arm—and his expres- 
sion was that of one intent to assuage another’s pain, but the 
sunshine of the last two days had tanned him so crimson, that 
it masked the generous flush which used to come to his face 
in such moments. He did not look at all like an anxious and 
vexed commander who had to listen to a desponding message 
in the midst of a battle. He was rather the courteous, lively 
host entertaining a shy, youthful visitor, and trying to place 
him at his ease. In his comforting, cheerful way, he said, ‘I 
‘can spare you a battalion.) But it was something of more 
worth than the promise of a battalion that the aid-de-camp 
carried back with him. He carried back tidings of the spirit 
in which Lord Raglan was conducting the battle. At a time 
when the French were cast down, it was of some moment to 
them to learn that the English head-quarters, strangely placed 
as they were in the midst of the Russian position, were a scene 
of robust animation, and that Lord Raglan looked and spoke 
like a man who had the foe in his power. 


XXVI. 

It is now time to speak of the events which had been bring- 
Causes of the Ing the French army into a state of increased de-- 
depression = pression. We saw that General Kiriakoff, com- 
which had : : : 
come upon the Manding the Russian left wing, had charge of the 
athe Telegraph Height, and confronted the Divisions of 
Prince Napoleon and Canrobert, having also on his left and 
left front, though at greater distances, the two separated bri- 
gades of Bosquet’s Division and the five battalions of Turks. 
The infantry force remaining under Kiriakoff’s orders had 
Operations on been reduced by Prince Mentschikoff’s abstraction 
the Telegraph of the ‘Moscow’ troops to a force of only nine bat- 
st ta talions; and afterward, when the second ‘ Moscow’ 
battalion rejoined the rest of the corps, the infantry force re- 
maining under Kiriakoff consisted only of the four ‘'Taroutine’ 
and the four ‘ Militia’ battalions. The part which these ‘'Ta- 
routine’ and ‘ Militia’ battalions had been taking in the battle 
may be told in a summary way. They did not attack the 
French, and no French infantry attacked them; but, since they 
were kept massed in battalion columns upon slopes which faced 


' ¢Je pnis vous donner un bataillon.’ I heard Lord Raglan make that 
answer. Lord Raglan, I imagine, meant to fulfill the promise by detaching 
one of the two battalions about to arrive under Adams; but by the time 
that force came up the course of events rendered it unnecessary to send the 
promised aid. However, Sir Richard England afterward moved into the 
close neighborhood of Prince Napoleon’s Division. 


550 ) INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuar. XLIV? 


toward the French, they were exposed to a good deal of artil- 
lery fire at long range, and were from time to time forced to 
shift their ground. The ‘ Militia’ battalions were troops of in- 
ferior “quality ; and, finding at last that wherever they stood 
they were more or less called by artillery, they dissolved. 
So, although he was supported by Prince Mentschikoff in per- 
son, with ‘the column of the eight battalions’ of which we 
shall presently speak, yet, in his own hands, Kiriakoff had only 
four battalions of sound infantry with which to show a coun- 
tenance to thirty thousand Frenchmen and Turks. But both 
of Bosquet’s brigades were distant. Canrobert indeed was on 
the verge of the plateau, and had so spread out his battalions 
as to have them in readiness for an encounter. Nay, seeing 
that he had no enemy before him except on his left front, he 
had somewhat brought round his right shoulder, and was fr ont- 
ing toward the Telegr aph, but he was still without his artil- 
lery, and was therefore hanging back cautionsly on the steep 
ground close below the smooth cap of the hill. 

Prince Napoleon’s Division at this time was in the bottom 
Backwardness Of the valley, close to the river; and, indeed, of the 
rene ivi. Whole foree which the Prince at ‘this time had 
sion. around him, there were only two battalions which 
had hitherto forded the stream.?, To the hopes which the 
French army had of being able to take a great part in the ac- 
tion, this backwardness of one of their finest divisions was al- 
most ruinous; ; and it is natural enough that a divisional gen- 
eral, whose rank gave him shelter from the ordeal of a fair mil- 
itary investigation, should, for that very reason, be made to suf- 
fer the more bitterly from the stings which men robbed of 
their freedom are accustomed to plant with the tongue. 

Resembling the first French Emperor in outward looks, 
Prince Napole. Prince Napoleon was also very like his uncle, not 
a apparently in his main objects, but in the character 
of his intellect; for he had that rare and exceeding clearness 
of view which man is able to command when he can separate 
things essential from things of circumstance, and keep the two 
sets of thoughts so clean asunder as to be able to go to the 
solution of his main problem with a mind unclouded by details 
—unclouded by even those details which it is vital for him to 
master and provide for, though he refuses to let them mix with 


' Chodasiewicz. 

* The battalion of the 19th Chasseurs, and one of the battalions of the Ma- 
rine Corps. The 2nd Zouave Regiment had also crossed, but this, it wili 
pr esently be seen, was not a part of the force which Prince Napoleon poe 

‘around him.’ 


' CuHap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 551 


the elements from which he fetches out his conclusion. And 
although one can not help knowing that the most cruel of all 
the imputations which can be brought against a soldier has 
long been kept fastened upon Prince Napoleon, I may sa'y that 
such knowledge as I have hitherto chanced to gain of his ca- 
reer has not yet enabled me to infer that he is a man of lower 
grade than his uncle in the matter of personal courage. 
Before the delinquency of the 3rd French Division on the 
The mishaps 4y of the Alma is accepted as one of the grounds | 
on which entitle the world to ratify its harsh judgment 
against Prince Napoleon, men ought, in all fairness, 
to know the mishap which befell the Division, and to under- 
stand the considerations which rendered this same mishap a 
much more grave evil than it might seem to be at first sight. 
The French are so military a people that, when a great na- 
tional sentiment is once aroused, the very children are ready 
to seize their little muskets and fall into columns of companies ; 
The materials Dut, in the mean time, and until the mighty nation 
fromwhich the is challenged, the great. bulk of the French peasant- 
French army Ty are perhaps more homely, more rustic, more un- 
enighon, adventurous than most of the people of Europe. 
From these quiet millions of people many tens of thousands of 
small, sad, harmless-looking young men are every year torn by. 
the conscription, and immense energy—energy informed with 
the traditions of an ancient and ever warlike nation—is brought 
to bear upon the object of turning these forlorn young cap- 
tives into able soldiers. All that instruction can achieve is 
carefully done; but the enforced change from rural life to the 
life of barracks and camps seems not to be favorable to the an- 
imal spirits of the men; for although, when seen in masses or 
groups working hard at their military duties, they always ap- 
pear to be brisk, and almost merry, their seeming animation is 
the result of smart orders—the animation of a horse when the 
rowels on either side are lightly touching his flanks; and dur- 
ing the hours whilst they are left to themselves, the French 
soldiers of the line engaged in campaigning are commonly de- 
pressed and spiritless.! Of course, this want of lustiness in 
the French army is superbly masked by all the resources of 
military pomp and all the outward signs which seem to show 
the presence of vigor, dispatch, and warlike ardor; but the ma- 
terial of which the line regiments are composed must always 
keep a good deal of its original nature, and whoever glances 
at the rising steps of French officers successful in Africa will 
1 T rest this upon what I have secn of the French army in Africa, in the 
Crimea, and on board ship. 


552 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuar. XLIV. - 


find that they have climbed to eminence, not by leading troops 
of the line, but by obtaining, in the critical part of their career, 
the command of choice French regiments, or, failing that, the 
command of troops of foreign race.’. These choice French 
The great dif- regiments are not composed of materials at all like 
ference be- ‘those which supply the line. On the contrary, they 


tween their : : 
choice rezi- number in their ranks many thousands of bold, ad- 


rat sttheir Venturous men, who take service in the army of 
troops. their own accord, and it is in these choice regi- 
ments that France sees the true expression of her warlike na- 
ture. Of all these choice regiments, the ‘Zouaves’ are the 
Fach Division, Most famous ; and each of the three foremost Divi- 
therefore, is — sions of the French army on the Alma had in it a 
a veneer’ regiment—a regiment with its two war battalions 
other choice belonging to the corps of the Zouaves. What 
regiment. : . ry . 

the spear-head is to a spear, that its Zouave Regi- 
ment was to each of these three Divisions.” 

Prince Napoleon’s Division comprised 9000 men, and of 
Prince Napole- these some 2000 were men of the 2nd Regiment 
Cd by he Zou, Of Zouaves. Whether this regiment was impatient 
ave regiment. of the supposed slowness with which Prince Napo- 
leon had hitherto advanced, whether it was governed by its 
contempt of line regiments, and a fierce resolve to have no 
neighborship with any other than Zouave comrades, or wheth- 
er there were other causes which shaped its movements, I 
have not learned; but what happened was this:—The regiment, 
after fording the river, broke away from the unfortunate Divi- 
sion to which it belonged, marched off toward its right front, 
began to climb the height, and never stopped until it had cool- 
ly ranged itself close alongside of the Ist Zouave Regiment— 
a regiment which formed the left of Canrobert’s array. With 
Canrobert’s Division, instead of with Prince Napoleon’s, the 
regiment continued to act until the close of the battle. Be- 
fore men are hard upon a divisional general for his seeming 
backwardness in an action, they ought to allow for the misfor- 
tune which left him, indeed, the master of some 7000 men, but 
robbed him of the warlike corps on which he must have relied 
as the element for giving life and fire to his masses. For, if 
one might recur to the image already used, one would say that 
the spear-head had flown off, and that what remained in the 


1 7.e., of the Foreign Legion, or of the native African levies. 

* I have borrowed this expressive image from one of our veteran command- 
ers, who used it once in conversation as a means of illustrating the kind of 
power which even a large body of our native Indian troops is accustomed to 
derive from the presence of one or two English battalions. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 553 


hands of Prince Napoleon was only the wooden shaft. Just- 
ice, in this regard, is the more needful, since it would plainly 
be unfitting and impolitic for Prince Napoleon to say in his 
defense that, with 7000 French troops around him, he was stiil 
reduced to helplessness by the want of his Zouave Regiment. 

There is another consideration which alone would seem to 
Also st,Ar. free Prince Napoleon from almost all the blame 
a wasrid- founded upon the backwardness of his Division. 
Division, and In the midst of that very Division Marshal St. Ar- 
he therefore _ naud was all this time riding; and it is obvious 
blefor its place that, by being thus present with a force which was 
in the field. hanging back out of its place, the ofticer who com- 
manded the whole French army brought full upon his own 
shoulders the weight of the blame which might otherwise be 
thrown upon the divisional general. 

But the eloping of his Zouave Regiment was not the only 
p’Aurelie'e ™IShap which befell Prince Napoleon. We saw 
brigadethrusts that D’Aurelle’s brigade—a brigade forming part 
itself forward of the 4th or Reserve Division—had been ordered 
Prince Napole- to support Canrobert. Of the motives which gov- 
th erned the leader of this brigade I know nothing. 
Perhaps, whilst he was low down in the bottom of the valley, 
he lost his conception of the distance (the lateral distance from 
east to west) which separated him from the Division he was 
ordered to support. At all events, what he did was this :— 
Having his whole brigade in a close, deep, narrow column, he 
pushed forward and jammed it into a steep road exactly in 
front of Prince Napoleon’s foremost battalion. He thus made 
it impossible for Prince Napoleon to get into action by that 
road,! and put him in the plight of a man left behind—in the 
plight of a general who commands one of the Divisions intend- 
ed to be foremost, and yet 1s left planted with his force in the 
rear of troops meant to act as reserves. Nor did D’Aurelle’s 
brigade do any the least good by thus thrusting itself into the 
road in advance of Prince Napoleon ; for, either because of the 
nature of the ground or from some other cause, the brigade 
never spread itself out so as to be capable of fighting. Al- 
putin anorder Ways in deep column with narrow front, it hung 
which ineapac- back, clinging fast to the steep part of the hill, and 
itates it from ets rails Ei 
any immediate remaining unseen by Kiriakoff, who moved freely 
combat. "_ across its front, as though there were no such force 
on the hill-side. Upon the whole, the result was, that, taken 
together, D’ Aurelle’s brigade and Prince Napoleon’s mutilated 

‘ There was another road by which the Prince could, and by which, at a 
later period, he did ascend. . 

Vou. L—A a 


554 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


Division were a column of near 12,000 men which might be 
said to be in mere order of march during all the critical period 
of the battle; for, with a depth of nearly a mile, the column 
had a front of only a few yards. Thus disposed, the 12,000 
Helplessness Men who formed the column were not, of course, 
of the deepcol- in a state which allowed of their attempting to en- 
Bares gage an enemy inclined to make a stand against 
by Draurel’s them; and they were, it would seem, very helpless 
Prince Napole- for purposes of mere self-defense.! Indeed, it is 
on's Division. hard to see how they could have escaped a ‘great 
disaster, if a bold Russian officer who knew the ground had 
come down with a few score of light infantry men upon the 
flank of D’Aurelle’s brigade. Apparently Kiriakoff’s absti- 
nence from all enterprises of this sort, and the quiet confidence 
with which he afterward manceuvred on the plateau, were both 
owing to the steepness of ground which hindered him from 
perceiving the small, slender head of D’ Aurelle’s column. 

Upon the whole, then, Kiriakoff, though handling no forces 
Condition of except his two batteries, his four Taroutine bat- 
see teak talions, and his fast dissolving militiamen, was not 
Height. at this time out of heart. His artillery, sweeping 
down the smooth cap of the Telegraph Height, both on its 
northern and northwestern sides, commanded the only ground 
by which Canrobert could advance ; and, firing over the heads 
of the Taroutine battalions, effectually kept him down. More- 
over, it still tormented all those masses of French infantry 
which, though approaching the Telegraph Height, were yet so 
low down as not to have come in for the shelter which the 
steepness of the hill-side afforded. . 

And now we shall see the cause of the stress which had been 
The‘column PUt upon the French army by that incubus of the 
‘of the eight ‘eight battalions’ of which the aid-de-camp spoke. 
“battalions.” We left Prince Mentschikoff countermarching from 
west to east with the seven battalions which he had under his. 
personal orders. The detached battalion of the ‘ Moscow’ corps 
had been afterward called in, and its junction brought up the 
whole body to eight battalions. With this force cathered i in 
mass, and standing halted on the right rear of the Telegraph, 
Prince Mentschikoff was preparing to make an onslaught upon 
the head of Canrobert’s Division ; but just as he was going to 
move, he abandoned the idea of leading the column in person. 
The cause of this change is obvious. Evidently Prince Ments- 

1 See the plan showing the way in which Prince Napoleon’s Division and 


D’Aurelle’s brigade were disposed. It is taken from the official French plan 
of the ‘ Atlas de la Guerre d’Orient. 


Plan (taken from the French official Atlas) showing what (at the time of the advance 
of the Column of the eight battalions against Canrobert) were the respective positions of 
Marshal St. Arnaud, of 1)’Aurelle’s brigade, of Prince Napoleon’s Zouaves, and of the rest 
of the Prince Napoleon’s division which remained with him when his Zouave battalions 
had gone off. ; 


Canrobert’s tvOops.. vc. i veces Vecscdacecvevees AA 
Prince Napoleon’s .......+..0006 best eadd yes» 


‘ 


D'Aurelle's brigade (a brigade 
belonging to Forey’s division 


Marshal St. Arnaud and his escort.......... 


Ke 
Py 


S Z 
SS The remainder 
of Canroberts 
Divistou 


556 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


chikoff was called off to another part of the field by tidings of 
what the English were doing. — 

Kiriakoff had had a horse shot under him, and was standing 
Kiriakoff isin. On foot near one of his ‘'Taroutine’ battalions when 
the charge of rince Mentschikoff rode up, and (appar ently sup- 
this column. pressing the tidings which forced him to quit, this 
part of the field) gave Kiriakoff the charge of the great ‘ col- 
‘umn of the eight “battalions? which had been amassed for the 
purpose of an attack upon Canrobert’s Division. The Prince 
then rode off, and was not again seen or heard of in this part 
of the field. Of course it’ follows that he went as straight as 
he could toward that part of his position which was undergo- 
ing the assault of the English.} 

Kiriakoff instantly took a fresh horse, and rode to the ground 
He marches it —- ground on the right rear of the Telegraph — 
across the front where the ‘column of the eight battalions’ awaited 
brigade. him. This vast column he disposed in a solid body, 


with a front of two and a depth of four massed battalions. 
When all was ready he began to move it flankwise from east 
to west. Plainly hindered by the ground from seeing the head 
of the column which was formed by D’Aurelle’s brigade and 
Prince Napoleon’s Division, he dealt with the French as though 
they had no such force near; for with that heavy column of his 
which trailed, as we have seen, to a depth of four battalions, he 
marched straight across the front of D’Aurelle’s brigade. He 
marched in peace. Nay, so far were the French from looking 
upon his hazardous movement in the light of a gift offered them 
by Fortune, that it was the dread apparition of this vast Rus-. 
sian column which had sent the panting aid-de-camp to the side 
of Lord Raglan’s stirrup. 

Bending afterward more toward the north, Kiriakoff ad- 


1 T say ‘it follows,’ because Prince Mentschikoff was a brave man, inca- 
pable of quitting one of the two scenes of battle except for the purpose of go- 
ing to the other. In the mention which they make of Prince Mentschikoff’s 
presence in different parts of the field, the narratives of the Russian divisional 
generals leave a chasm of several important minutes. This chasm, as will 
be seen at a later page, I try to fill up by conjecture. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. B57 


And then aa. Vanced upon the right centre of the ground on which 
vances upon Canrobert had spread his battalions. Canrobert’s 
the rigttcen- troops did not long stand their ground; for when 
bert’s Divi. _Kiriakoff, advancing and still advancing, was nearly 
aan at last within musket-shot of his foe, the French no 
longer bore up under the weight that is laid upon the heart 
of a Continental soldier by the approach of a great column of 
infantry. Kiriakoff conceives that he inflicted a sheer defeat 
upon his foe. ‘Canrobert’s Division,’ he writes, ‘could not 
‘resist our charge. Hastily taking off their batteries, they be- 
‘gan to descend the hilly bank.’! On the other hand, the 
French say nothing of this reverse. Perhaps the truth lies in-. 
termediately between the broad assertion of Kiriakoff and the 
unfaithful silence of the French; for what seems the most like- 
ly is, that Canrobert, being still without his artillery, was for 
the moment resolved to decline the combat, and that with that 
view, and of his own free will, without waiting to be put un- 
der stress of actual fight, he drew his troops down to a steeper 
The head of part of the hill-side. Be this as it may, it is certain 
Deen; that, under the pressure of Kiriakoff’s great col- 
back. umn, the head of Canrobert’s Division fell back.? 
Along almost their whole array at this time it seemed to 
State ofthe fae ill with the Allies. Still close to the sea-shore, 
battle at this Bouat, with one French brigade and 5000 Turks, 
bo aie was without artillery, and was therefore holding 
back from the plateau, far away from any scene of strife. Fol- 
lowing the same barren track, General Forey, with Lourmel’s 
brigade, was marching.to the sea-shore, and was annulled. 
Bosquet, with his one brigade on the plateau, had long been 
isolated, and was not so near to any Russian battalion as to be 
able to engage it with his infantry. Canrobert was undergo- 
ing the check which we have just seen. The unwieldy column 
formed by D’Aurelle’s brigade and by Prince Napoleon’s Di- 
vision —a column with a front of only a few yards, and the 
depth of a mile, was in an order adapted for the march, but 
not for fighting, and, its small slender crest being kept close 
down out of sight, had failed to exert that pressure which— 


i Kiriakoff’s narrative. It will be observed that his statement clashes with 
the passage in which I say that Canrobert was without his guns. I have re- 
lied upon the detailed statements supplied to me from French sources, and 
if I am right in doing so, it follows that Kiriakoff must have been mistaken 
in supposing that he saw the French carrying off their guns. i 

2 Upon this point Kiriakoff’s narrative is confirmed by Romaine, Writ- 
ing from his saddle, and at the very minute of witnessing the event, he re- 
corded it in these words :-—‘ French centre falling back.’ Romaine’s saddle- 
notes. 


Plan (taken fromthe French official Atlas) showing the advance of the ** Column of the 
eight Battalions” against Canrobert’s Division. 


a 
on@Gre. ~s Sheu: cows 
<< eee. ee. 8 Oe ae ere, | 


Li 
aoe j 
ih an 


\\ \N 
“\ 
\V, 


= 
Zz) 
AN "a i YVAN yi 


| 


Y 


af | SN 
SS \\ 


oe 


A 


L727 


¥.B.—Those parts of the above plan which show the position of the ‘* Column of eight 
Battalions” and of the French troops are believed to be nearly accurate, but the other 
parts of the plan are not to be relied upon. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 559 


even without firing a shot—may be inflicted by the known 
presence of a great body of troops. And the forces thus pal- 
sied were nothing less than the whole French army, including 
even their reserves. Much, of course, might always be hoped 
from the bravery and the swift invention of the warlike 
French; but apart from that vast though undefined resource, 
and apart from what fortune might do for him, Marshal St. 
Arnaud was without the means which would enable him to 
bear up against any grave disaster, and hinder it from becom- 
ing sheer ruin. 

The fortunes of the English had been checkered, and it 
might be said that at. this moment their prospects were a good 
deal overcast. Evans, still repressed by the commanding fire 
of the Causeway batteries, and having but three battalions to 
fight with, was sustaining a hard conflict. Codrington’s peo- 
ple had been forced to relinquish their hold of the Great Re- 
doubt; and the shattered remains of the battalions which 
stormed the work were descending the slope of the hill, and 
breaking down by their bodily weight the left wing of a bat- 
talion of Guards. Finally, General Buller, on our extreme 
left, was in an attitude of mere defense. It is true that the 
Great Redoubt had been dismantled, that (with the exception 
of the centre battalion of the Guards) our supports had not 
yet tried their prowess, and that the bare apparition of our 
Head-Quarter Staff on the knoll was putting a heavy stress on 
the enemy. It is true, also, that there was one English regi- 
ment still fighting with a Russian column. All else had of late 
gone ill. 

XXVII. 

This was the condition of things when, having been hurried 
down to the ford, and dragged through the river, and up over 
steep, rugged cround, the two guns, for which Lord Raglan 
had prayed, were brought up at leneth to the summit of the 
knoll. They were guns belonging to Turner’s battery, and 
they were already crossing the river when Dickson came. upon 
Toe them. The two pieces were soon unlimbered ; and 

guns 4 
which Lord one of them—for the artillerymen had not all been 
Raglan had able to keep pace—was worked by Dickson with his 
brought tothe Own hands. The guns were pointed upon the flank 
Pee of the Causeway batteries. Every one watched 
Their freenfi- keenly for the result of the first shot. The first 
Causeway bat- Shot failed. Some one said: ‘ Allow a little more 
teres ad ne. ‘for the wind; and the words were not spoken as 
mytowith- though they were a quotation from ‘Ivanhoe,’ but 
draw hisguns. yather in a way showing that the speaker knew 


560 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


something of artillery practice. The next shot, or the next 
shot but one, took effect upon the Causeway batteries. It 
struck, they say, a tumbril which stood just in rear of the guns. 

It presently became a joyful certainty that the Causeway 
batteries, exposing their flank to this fire from the knoll, could 
not hold their ground; and in a few moments a keen-eyed of- 
ficer, who was one of the group around Lord Raglan, cried 
out with great joy, ‘ He is carrying off his guns! And this 
was true. The field-pieces which formed the Causeway bat- 
teries were rapidly limbered up, and dragged to another ground 
far up in the rear.! 

With the two great columns of infantry, which constituted 
eae the enemy’s reserves, it fared no better. After not 
through the more than two failures, the gunner got their range, 
cree nq ~~ and our nine-pounders plowed through the serried 
drives them | masses of the two Russian columns, cutting lanes 

’ through and through them. Yet for some minutes 

the columns stood firm. And even when the still incréasing 
havoc at length overruled the punctilio of those brave men, it 
seemed to be in obedience to orders, and not under the stress 
of any confusing terror, that the two great columns gave way. 
They retreated in good order. 
_ Our gunners then tried their pieces upon the Vladimir bat- 
talions, and although the range was too great to allow of their 
striking the column, they impressed Kvetzinski with a contrary 
belief. He was sure that these troops were reached by the 
guns on the knoll; and it will be seen by-and-by that this his 
belief was one of the causes which helped to govern his move- 
ments. 

This was the time when the great column. of the Ouglitz 
corps, being fired, as it seemed, with a vehement spirit, was still 
marching down from the higher slopes of the Kourgané Hill 
with a mind to support the Vladimir battalions, and enable 
them to press the retreat of our soldiery then coming down in 
clusters from the Great Redoubt; but the disasters which Lord 
Raglan had that moment inflicted upon the enemy by the aid 
of the two guns on the knoll made it natural for the Russian 
The Ouglitz Generals, who saw what was done, to stop short 
column was, in any forward movement. The Ouglitz column, as 


stopped in its . : - 
advance. we before saw, was stopped in the midst of its eager 


1 Kiriakoff says that these guns were dragged off by the men of the Boro- 
dino corps. I do not think that there. were any observers on the knoll who 
saw guns dragged from the field by infantry; but there were features in the 
ground which prevented their seeing into the line of retreat as effectually as 
they had seen into the batteries. ; 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 561 


Soalsowas advance; and, for want of the support which these 
the Vladimir. troops had been going to lend, the triumphant Vlad- 
imir column was brought to a halt on the site of the Great 
Redoubt. 

So, here was the spell which now for several minutes had 
been governing the battle. The apparition of a score of plumed 
horsemen on this knoll may have had more or less to do with 
the resolve which led Kvetzinski to dismantle the Great Re- 
doubt; but, at all events, this apparition, and the fire of 
Lord Raglan’s two guns, had enforced the withdrawal of the 
Causeway batteries; had laid open the entrance of the Pass ; 
had shattered the enemy’s reserves; had stopped the onward 
march of the Ouglitz battalions; and had chained up the high- 
mettled Vladimir in the midst of its triumphant advance. 


XXVIII. 

On and near the great road leading down to the bridge, 
Progress hithe VANS had been continuing his difficult struggle. 
ertomade by He still shared with the flames the possession of 
Piatt the village ; still held the vineyards below it; and 
a part of his small force had succeeded, as already shown, in 
crossing the river, and establishing itself under the bank on the 
Russian side; but beyond the ground thus gained Evans had 
not yet been able to push; for the Causeway batteries were 
so well placed and so diligently served that they closed the 
. mouth of the Pass. 

The force around Evans was scant, but in other times he had 
commanded an army, and whilst he watched the efforts of the 
only three battalions: remaining near him, he was alive to the 
progress of the action in other parts of the field. He had just 
He hears the Witnessed the onset of Codrington’s brigade ;. and 
guns from the he was sitting in his saddle, tormented with the 
knoli, and : F J 
presently sees gYlef of observing that, for want of supports, the 
tion the _-« Storming of the Great Redoubt was likely to be all 
Causeway bat- In vain, when suddenly he heard the report of a 
ina nine-pounder gun sounding from a very new quar- 
ter—sounding from somewhere among the knolls and broken 
ground on his right front, and in the heart of the Russian po- 
sition. The fire was repeated. Evans keenly watched the 
Causeway batteries in his front. And not in vain, for again 
the nine-pounder was heard, and there followed that sort of 
change in the Russian batteries which seemed to show that 


'The 47th, the 30th, and the 55th. The 95th, as we saw, was earried 
forward in the rush of Codrington’s brigade, and Evans's second brigade 
(with the exception of the 47th regiment) was in another part of the field. 


AA? 


562 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, [Cuar. XLIV. 


they were under fire—under fire: coming flankwise from the 
west. Again and again the fire of the nine-pounder was re- 
peated. The sound came from a quarter to which it was to be 
expected that the French might have reached ; but some, they 
say, fancied and said, ‘That is an English gun!’ A busy change 
began to stir in the Russian batteries. Presently, though the 
smoke of the burning village lay heavy in this part of the field, 
our people could make out what the change was. It was one 
of great moment to the Allies; for the enemy was limbering 
up, and beginning to carry off the sixteen guns which up to 
this minute had barred the mouth of the Pass. The great road 
lay open. ? 

Evans understood the battle. He acted instantly. He saw 
He at once ad- that, though he was weak, yet the moment had 
“hah come for the advance of his three battalions. 

The 47th Regiment had to-ford the river below the bridge, 
and at a part where the water was deep. It encountered a 
good deal of difficulty in crossing. Some men were drowned, 
but the rest gained the bank on the Russian side of the stream, 
and moved forward. Evans rode across the stream at a point 
between the 47th and Pennefather’s brigade. 

Pennefather pressed forward. Colonel Stacy needed no or- 
der to advance. Understanding the business of war, he had 
already gained a lodgment for his battalion! under the farther 
bank of the river, and he was plying the Russian artillerymen 
with rifle fire when he observed that the enemy’s batteries 
suddenly slackened their fire. He inferred the change that 
was coming, and at once caused his men to spring up the 
bank, formed them carefully on the top, and then, having his 
battalion in a beautiful line, marched straight up toward the 
site of the Causeway batteries. Colonel Warren moved up 
his battalion? in the same direction. The enemy had partly 
destroyed the bridge. 

From first to last, the enemy, so far as I know, had done but 
little with the two formed battalions of his Borodino corps 
which had been posted in this part of the field ;4 and he now 
began to draw in the multitude of skirmishers which had hith- 


2 The 30th Regiment. 2 The 55th Regiment. 

* He imagined that his battalion of sappers and miners had destroyed it, 
but this was an error, Except to the parapet, which was removed, not much 
harm was done to the bridge. 

* General Kiriakoff says, as we have already mentioned, that the Borodino 
battalions dragged away the guns of the Causeway batteries, but I can not find 
any other distinct statement of things done by the regiment in the course of 
the battle. 


- 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 563 


Theenemy  €rto swarmed in the valley... He did not engage 


does not fu- his infantry in farther endeavors to bar the mouth 
ther resist this ° : 3 
advance with Of the Pass, nor even show one of his battalions in 


his infantry, this part of the great road; but upon the hillocks, 
a good way in rear ‘of the ground just abandoned by the 
Causeway batteries, he again established his guns; and from 
this new position, though not with great effect, he opened fire 
upon our advancing troops. 

To this fire Evans was now able to reply with a strong force 
Evans joined of artillery, for Sir Richard England rode up, pro- 
England in posed to accompany him in the advance, and offer- 


person, who ed to place both his batteries at Evans’s disposal. 


h i Ee 
him thirty $0 the two divisional generals rode forward togeth- 


guns. er, having with them altogether some thirty pieces 
of field artillery.? 

Moreover, the Division of Sir Richard England was follow- 
ing him into the Pass, and would soon bring a welcome sup- 
port to Evans’s three battalions.? 

But some minutes elapsed before these supports could come 
Sir Richara Up, and, by reason of the disasters wlnch had be- 


England's dis- fallen our soldiery at the Great Redoubt, the three 
positions for - : — R . 
bringing sup- battalions which Evans had with him were for some 


port to Evans. time almost alone upon the enemy’s ground. Yet 
not utterly; for on the western slope of the Kourgané Hill 
one English battalion—Lacy Yea, with his 7th Fusileers—was 
still holding its ground, still engaged with a mass of the ene- 
my’s infantry. That stand that Lacy Yea had been making 
was a hinge on which a good deal might turn. If he should 


‘ Three battalions, it seems, viz., two out of the four Borodino battalions, 
and the No. 6 rifle battalion, were employed as skirmishers. 

* 7.e., With the three batteries belonging respectively to the Ist, the 2nd, 
and the Light Divisions. 

3 Apparently Sir Richard England did not know of the disaster which be- 
fell the Scots Fusileer Guards in time to be able to adapt his measures to 
that event. Of course, if he had known it in time, he would have been anx- 
ious to put a literal interpretation upon the order ‘to support the Guards,’ 
and would have moved a part of his force toward the chasm which had been 
wrought in the centre of the Household brigade. I took pains to make out 
the exact movements of the 3rd Division, but in vain; for those who would 
be the most likely to know, differ broadly the one from the other. By far- 
ther trouble I might have dispelled this obscurity; but the Division was not 
engaged to an extent greater than might be inferred from its losses (one 
killed and seventeen wounded), and therefore I have desisted from farther 
endeavors. It may be safely said, however, that after receiving the order to 
support the Guards, Sir Richard England held his Division in hand, sending 
portions of it to give support where he deemed it to be needed; and that 
when Pennefather’s brigade crossed the river, it was followed by the whole or 


by the bulk of the 3rd Division. 


564 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuapr. XLIV. 


hold his ground a few minutes more, he would cover from the 
enemy’s masses the left flank and left front of Evans’s three 
battalions, and at the end of that time the supports would be 
Evans's situa. UP» Evans was an old commander, who knew how 
tion inthe to read the signs of a battle, and he was able to see 
meantime. and understand that the enemy, almost in the very 
moment of his success at the Great Redoubt, was palsied by 
the guns still sounding from the knoll, and was losing his free- 
dom of action. He resolved to stand firm in the Pass; and he 
established his thirty guns near the site of the batteries which 
had just been withdrawn by the Russians. For some minutes 
his position was rather critical; and he had to trust much to 
the hope that Lacy Yea and his Fusileers would be able to 
hold their ground. 


XXIX. 

It was between the Great Causeway and the slopes of the 
Protractea  - WOurgané Hill that Lacy Yea, with his 7th Fusil- 
fight beiween eers, had long been maintaining an obstinate con- 
the th Fusil- flict. Long ago, as we saw, he had crossed the riv- 
left Kazan col- er, had brought his men to the top of the bank, and 
ales « was trying to form them, when there came down 
marching upon him a strong Russian column—a column of two 
battalions, and numbering 1500 men. These battalions be- 
longed to the corps which was sometimes called the Regiment 
of the Grand-Duke Michael, and more often the Regiment of 
Kazan. Like the English corps to which they stood opposed, 
these battalions were ‘ Fusileers.’, Soon the column was halted. 

It was then that for the first time in that war the soldiery 
of the Western Powers were brought so near to a body of 
Russian troops as to be able to scrutinize its material. The 
men of the column were of high stature and strictly upright, 
with broad, plain, whitish faces, all seemingly cast in a com- 
mon mould, and very similar the one to the other. The long 
gray overcoat, worn alike by all the officers and men of the 
Russian forces, and reaching down to the ankles, gave no clew 
to distinguish this mass from any other of the Czar’s battal- 
ions ; but spiked helmets, glittering with burnished plates of 
brass, led some of the English to imagine that the column 
formed part of the Emperor’s guard.!. The body was formed 


' The notion was ill founded, there being none of the Imperial Guard in 
the Crimea. I supposed at one time that the helmet imported the presence 
of heavy infantry, and that the flat round forage-cap with which Crimea men 
are so familiar, denoted a light infantry regiment. This, however, is,not, it 
seems, the case. The regiment of Kazan was a light infantry regiment. 


Cap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 565 


with great precision in close column with a front of only one 
company; but a chain of skirmishers, thrown out on either 
flank in prolongation of the front rank, sought to combine with 
the solid formation of the column some of the advantages of 
an array in line.!. The steady men were in the front and on 
the flanks of the column; and the.constant firing in the air 
which went on in the, interior of the solid battalions showed 
that that was the place assigned to the young soldiers. The 
column stood halted at a distance of, perhaps, some fifty yards 
from the knotted chain of soldiery which represented the 7th 
Fusileers. 
_ Lacy Yea was so rough an enforcer of discipline that he had 
never been much liked in peace-time by those who had to obey 
him; but when once the 7th Fusileers were in campaign, and 
still more when they came to be engaged with the enemy, they 
found that their chief was a man who could and. would seize 
for his regiment all such chances of welfare and glory as might 
come with the fortune of war. Before many months were 
over, they learned that although other regiments might be dy- 
ing of want, yet by force of their Colonel’s strong will there 
was food and warmth to be got for the 7th Fusileers; and 
still sooner, they came to know that the fiery nature of their 
chief was the quality which would help them to have dominion 
over-the enemy. Thenceforth the strong man was a king be- 
loved by his people. 

Lacy Yea had not time to put his Fusileers in their wonted 
array, for the enemy’s column was so near, that forthwith, and 
at the instant, it was necessary to ply it with fire; but what 
man could do, he did. His very shoulders so labored and 
strove with the might of his desire to form line, that the curt 
red shell-jacket he wore was as though it were a world too 
scant for the strength of the man and the passion that raged 
within him; but when he turned, his dark eyes yielded fire, 
and all the while from his deep-chiseled, merciless lips, there 
-pealed the thunder of imprecation and command. Wherever 
the men had got clustered together, there—fiercely coming— 
he wedged his cob into the thick of the crowd—the ‘ rooge,’ 
he would call it in his old Eton idiom of speech—and by dint 
of will tore it asunder. Though he could not form an even ar- 
ray, yet he disentangled the thickest clusters of the soldiery, 


' The advantages of this hybrid formation were strongly urged about the 
middle of the last century by General Lloyd, an Englishman. General 
_ Lloyd was an officer in the service of Russia, and it seems probable that the 
formation of which he was a vehement advocate may have been adopted in 
the Russian service in consequence of his advice. 


566 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


and forced the men to open out into a lengthened chain ap- 
proaching to line formation. Numbers of the Fusileers were 
wanting, and on the other hand there were mingled with the 
battalion many of the soldiery of other regiments. With a 
force in this state, Yea was not in a condition to attempt a 
charge or any other combined movement. All he could hope 
to be able to do was to keep his people firm on their ground, 
to hinder them from contracting their front or gathering into 
heavy clusters, and then leave every man to make the best use 
he could of his rifle. 

- Continental generals would not easily believe that upon fair 
open ground there could be a doubtful conflict between, on 
the one side, a body of fifteen hundred brave, steady, disci- 
plined soldiers, superbly massed in close column, and, on the 
other, a loose knotted chain of six or seven hundred light in- 
fantry men without formation. Yet the fight was not so une- 
qual as it seemed. A close column of infantry has only small 
means of offense, and is itself a thing so easy to hurt that every 
volley it receives from steady troops must load it with corpses 
and wounded men. Tested strictly in that way—tested strictly 
by its small means of hurting people, and the ease with which 
it can be hurt—the close column is a weak thing to fight with ; 
and yet it has power over the troops of most nations, because its 
grandeur well fits it for weighing upon the imaginations of men, 

But Lacy Yea and his islanders were not so fashioned by 
nature, nor so tamed down by much learning, as to be liable to 
be easily coerced in any subtle, metaphysical way; and although 
the shots of individual soldiers and small knots of men had not, 
of course, the crushing power which would have been exerted 
by the fire of the 7th Fusileers when formed and drawn up in 
line, still, the well-handled rifles of our men soon began to car- 
ry havoc into the dark gray oblong mass of living beings which 
served them for their easy target. And though seemingly the 
front rank of the compact mass yearned to move forward, 
there was always occurring in the interior some sudden death 
or some trouble with a wounded man, which seemed not only 
to breed difficulty in the way of an advance, but also to make 
the column here and there begin to look spotted and faulty. 
The distance was such as to allow of a good deal of shooting 
at particular men. -Once, Yea himself found that he was sin- 
gled out to be killed, and was covered by a musket or rifle; 
but the marksman was so fastidious about his aim, that before . 
he touched the trigger a quick-eyed English corporal found 
time to intervene, and save his colonel’s life by shooting the 
careful Russian in the midst of his studies. ‘Thank you, my 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 567 


‘man,’ said Lacy Yea; ‘if I live through this, you shall be a ser- 
‘geant to-night.’ 

Whilst this long fight went on, it sometimes happened that 
the fire and impatience of one or other of the Fusileers would 
carry a man into closer quarters with the column. Of those 
who were spurred by sudden impulses of this kind, Monck was 
one. He sprang forward, they say, from his place on the left 
of the Fusileers, and saying, ‘Come on, 8th company !’ rushed 
up to the enemy’s massed battalions, ran his sword through a 
man in the front rank, and struck another with his fist. He 
was then shot dead by a musket fired from the second rank of 
the column. Personal enterprises of this kind were incidents 
varying the tenor of the fight; but it was by musket or rifle 
ball, at a distance of some fifty yards, that the real strife be- 
tween the two corps was waged. 

It was not always against the enemy that Lacy Yea was la- 
boring. He came to know or imagine that some of his Fusil- 
eers had remained behind in the valley finding base shelter. 
That this should be, and that even for a few minutes this should 
pass, was to him not tolerable; and in the fiercest heat of his 
strife with the column, one of his best officers was sent back, 
that he might turn the drove out of their sheds, and force them 
to come instantly into the presence of the enemy—ainto the 
presence—more terrible still—of their raging colonel. 

The fight lasted. When Codrington’s people were scarce 
beginning their rush toward the face of the Great Redoubt, 
the 7th Fusileers—rudely and hastily gathered, but contriving 
to hold together—were beginning this battle of their own. 
When the storming battalions came down, the regiment was 
fighting still. When the despondency of the French army was 
at its worst; when the head of Canrobert’s Division was pushed 
back down the hill by the ‘column of the eight battalions ;’ 
when along the whole line of the Allies there was no other regi- 
ment fighting, Lacy Yea and his people were still at their work. 
When Evans, having crossed the river, was leading his three 
battalions to the site of the Causeway batteries, it was the 7th 
Fusileers that stood fighting alone on his left; and nearly at 
the very time when disaster befell the centre of the brigade of 
Guards, Lacy Yea and his Fusileers were gathering at last the 
reward of their soldierly virtue. | 

For by this time death and wounds, making cavities and 
compelling small changes in the great living mass, had injured 
the symmetry of the spruce Russian column. As a piece of 
mechanism, it was no longer what it had been when the fight 
began; but the spirit of the brave and obedient men who com- 


568 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


posed it was still high. The cohesion of the mass was not yet 
destroyed; but it was endangered, and had come to depend 
very much upon the personal exertions of officers. 

Lacy Yea observed that every now and then, when a part 
of the column was becoming faulty, a certain man always on 
foot, but of vast towering stature, would stride quickly to the 
detective spot, and exert so great an ascendency, that steadi- 
ness and order seemed always to be restored by his presence. 
The gray overcoat common to all shrouded the rank of every 
Russian officer, and since this man was not on horseback, there 
was nothing to disclose his station in the corps save the power 
which he seemed to wield. What its colonel was to the 7th 
Fusileers, that the big man seemed to be to the Russian col- 
umn; and it was not, I think, without a kind of sympathy with 
him ; it was not, one would believe, without a manly reluctance 
that Yea ordered his people to shoot the tall man. He did, 
however, so order, and he was quickly obeyed. The tall man ~ 
dropped dead, and when he had fallen there was no one who | 
seemed to be the like of him in power. 

The issue of this long fight of the Fusileers was growing to 
be a thing of so great moment, or else the sight of it was be- 
come so heating, that Prince Gortschakoff now resolved to take 
part in it bodily. So, deputing Colonel Issakoff, then acting 
as his Chief of the Staff, to represent him in his absence, he 
rode down to the column, and strove to lead it on to a charge 
with the bayonet. But he could do nothing; for, because of 
the disorder already beginning, and the loss of great numbers 
of its officers, the heart was nearly out of the column. So, giv- 
ing orders for the battalions to keep up their fire, he rode away 
to his right, and left the column still engaged with Yea and 
his Fusileers.! . 

Portions of the column—mainly those in the centre and in 
the rear—became discomposed and unsettled. Numbers of 
men moved a little one way or another, and of these, some 
looked as though they stepped a pace backward ; but no man 
as yet turned round to face the rear. However, though the 
movement of each soldier, taken singly, was trifling and insig- 
nificant, yet even that little displacement of many men at the 
same time was shaking the structure. Plainly, the men must 


? What Prince Gortschakoff says was this :—‘TI first rode toward the Fu- 
‘sileers, who were standing firm under a very heavy fire, although losing a 
‘large amount of men. I first tried to lead them on (& la baionette), but, 
‘ finding that they could not re-form immediately for a charge, and had lost 
‘nearly all their officers, I left them with orders to continue their feu de 
‘ bataillons.’ 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 569 


be ceasing to feel that the column they stood in was solid. 
The ranks, which had been straight as arrows, became bent 
and wavy. . 

The Russian officers well understood these signs. With 
drawn swords, moving hither and thither as actively as they 
could in their long, gray, melancholy coats, they seemed to 
become loud and vehement with their orders, their entreaties, 
their threats. Presently their gestures grew violent, and more 
than one officer was seen to go and seize a wavering soldier 
by the throat. But in vain; for, seemingly by some law of its 
own nature rather than under any new stress of external force, 
the column began to dissolve. The hard mass became fluid. 
It still cohered; but what had been, as it were, the outlines 
of a wall, were becoming like the outlines: of a cloud. First 
Defeat of the Some, then more, then all turned round. Moving 
column, — slowly, and as though discontent with its fate, the 
column began to fall back. 

The 7th Fusileers bought this triumph with blood. In killed 
and wounded it lost twelve officers, and more than two hund- 
red men. Monck, we before saw, was killed; and Hare, Wat- 
son, Fitzgerald, Persse, Appleyard, Coney, Crofton, Carpenter, 
and Jones, were wounded. For some time one of the colors 
of the regiment was anissing, but it did not at any time fall 
into the hands of the enemy. It was safe in the charge of 
some soldiers belonging to the Royal Welsh.! 

A regimental officer engaged in a general action can not oft- 
en at the time compute the relative importance of the duty. 
which he is performing; but on the morrow of the battle, or 
even perhaps much later, he may learn that the fortune of the 
day was hinging upon the conduct of his single regiment. 
Lacy Yea was a simple-hearted, straight-going man, with a 
wholesome ardor for fighting, and a great care for the honor 
and welfare of his regiment, but not looking far beyond it. 
Around him the battle had been flowing and ebbing. With 
the watching of those changes he did not much vex his mind. 
He hardly, perhaps, remarked them. He was too busy with 
the fight to be able to contemplate the battle. Except when 
he yearned to unearth the people whom he believed to be 
skulking, and to have them dragged before him, he thought of 
nothing but that the corps he commanded should stand fight- 
ing and fighting till it got the victory. He went through with 
his resolve, and hardly knew at the time the full worth of his 

’ The color, I believe, was found lying upon the ground, but how that 


came to happen I do not know, and I have not thought it necessary to find 
out, because the color was never for a moment ‘ lost.” 


570 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV, 


constancy. He hardly knew that, whilst he fought, the whole 
of the English front line—first on his left hand, and then on his 
right—had been getting the support it grievously needed from 
the tenacity of his 7th Fusileers.! 

It was plainly right that the defeated column should be 
pressed in its retreat by troops in a state of formation; and 
Yea, looking back, perceived that the Guards were now at 
Itis arrancea Hand. Troubridge went to the Grenadiers; saw 
that thede- one of its officers; told him of the defeat of the 
feated coum Russian column, and of the condition of the 7th Fu- 
biskhe (iransy sileers ; and asked whether it would not be well that 

the Grenadier Guards should come up and clinch’ 
the defeat of the retiring column. Colonel Hood was referred 
to, and he at once consented to do as was proposed. 3 

Sir George Brown—his gray so wounded that men saw the 
blood from afar—now chanced to ride to the part of the hill- 
side where Troubridge was passing. After telling him of the 
defeat of the Russian column, and of the state of the 7th Fu- 
sileers, Troubridge asked him whether the Fusileers should go 
on, or allow the Guards to pass them.? 

Sir George said, ‘ Let the Guards go on. Collect your men, 
‘and afterward resume the advance.’ 

When it was nearly abreast of the Great Redoubt, the col- 
State ofthe umn just defeated by Lacy Yea’s Fusileers was able 
field in this to rally, and again show a front to the English ;3 
part of the 4 3 tiers 
Russian posi: for it had on its right the great Viadimir column, 
pe which still stood halted near the parapet of the 
Great Redoubt. On the right rear of the Vladimir men there 
was a double-battalion column, formed out of the Kazan corps.* 
On the right of that last column, but still farther held back, 


1 See plan. When Codrington’s people were storming the redoubt, they 
were covered on their right by the fight which Yea was there maintaining. 
When they had to fall back, it was still that stand of the Fusilcers which 
covered their flank. When Evans advanced with his three battalions, there 
was nothing but the 7th Fusileers to cover his left. 

* At this time, and whilst he was still speaking with Sir George Brown, 
Troubridge observed the sight, which will be referred to in a future page, as 
fixing the order in which events followed one another in different parts of 
the field. 

3 After their defeat, the two battelane which composed the column seem 
to have parted from one another. The two bodies into which it resolved it- 
self remained bravely linger ing on the hill-side, though, having lost most of 
their officers, they were in a helpless condition. 

The column defeated by the 19th Regiment, and by some of the men of 
the 23rd. 


Cnap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 571 


there was another double-battalion column, formed of the Sous- 
dal corps; and next to these, but much more in advance, and 
standing on the extreme right of the whole of the Russian in- 
fantry, there were posted the two remaining battalions of the 
Sousdal corps. Somewhere in this part of the field, but oper- 
ating, it would seem, as skirmishers, and not perhaps bringing 
any very material accession of strength, there were the “two 
battalions of sailors. As an immediate reser ve, or rather as a 
support for all these forces, the four Ouglitz battalions were 
kept in hand on the higher slopes of the Kourgané Hill, and 
were still, as before, massed in column. At some.distance on 
the extreme right of the Russian position, the enemy’s cavalry 
stood posted as before, confronting from afar, but never pro- 
voking, the horsemen of our Light Brigade. After allowing 
for casualties, and especially for the heavy losses sustained by 
the column which engaged our 7th Fusileers, it may be con- 
jectured that these Russian forces on the Kourgané Hill 
amounted to some 15,000 men. Except the Kazan battalions, 
none of these troops had been hitherto engaged in hard fight- 
ing, for the triumphant Vladimir column had not yet encoun- 
tered formed troops. Nearly all the Russian artillery had 
been taken away from the front, and, except that there were 
five pieces of ordnance not yet withdrawn from the Lesser 
Redoubt, the enemy had no guns now remaining in battery. 
The impending struggle was a fight —a sheer fight — of in- 
fantry. 

The advance of the Guards had an ill beginning. We saw 
The Scots Fu- that whilst the Grenadiers and the Coldstream 
etic ane were still forming under the bank or completing 
slope. their passage of the river, the centre battalion of 
the brigade—the battalion called the ‘Scots Fusileer Guards’ 
Disaster whicn —— had been hurried forward by the appeal from 
befell its left the troops then still cling ng to the redoubt, had in- 
Companie®- curred the fire of the Viadimir column, and had aft- 
erward encountered a heap of our men retreating, which broke 
the formation of its left companies by sheer bodily force, and 
compelled them to fall back in disorder. The remnant of the 
battalion thus maimed was at the moment without support; for 
directly in its rear there were no formed troops coming up, 
and of the two battalions on its right hand and on its left, 
neither one nor the other had hitherto come up abreast of it. 
On the other hand, the force to which the remnant of this En- 
glish battalion stood opposed was that majestic Vladimir col- 
umn which had just been driving our Light Infantry men from 
the parapet of the redoubt. Numbering perhaps some four or 


- 


572 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Cnar. XLIV. 


five hundred men, these remains of what had been the centre 
Situation in battalion of the Guards stood drawn up in line 
whieh therem- upon a smooth, open slope, and were met by a hith- 
battalionstood. erto victorious column, which was nearly three 
thousand strong. Still, for some time the maimed battalion 
pushed forward, and, when afterward it came to a halt, a hard 
effort was made to hold the ground. But in vain. Either 
the overwhelming weight. of the column in its front, or the 
mishap encountered by the left companies of the English bat- 
talion, or some other cause of evil had destroyed its principle 
It falls back in Of cohesion; for this right wing now followed the 
Alspnder. fate of the left one, got into disorder, and fell back. 
For a time, the whole battalion of the Scots Fusileer Guards 
was in confusion near the bank of the river. 

This disaster, and the hard struggle maintained by those 
who sought to avert it, inflicted loss upon the Scots Fusileer 
Guards. Lord Chewton and 3 sergeants were killed. Colo- 
nel Dalrymple, Colonel Berkeley, Colonel Hepburn, Colonel 
Haygarth, Astley, Bulwer, Buckley, Gipps, Lord Ennismore, 
and Hugh Annesley,' and 13 sergeants, were wounded; and 
of the rank and file, 17 were killed and 137 wounded. 

When Colonel Hood consented to move forward his battal- 
TheGrenadier lon against the column just defeated by Lacy Yea, 
Guards ascend fe at once caused his men to ascend the bank which 


to the top of 
the bank, and had hitherto sheltered it; and, as soon as the bat- 


ere ares talion was on the top, its left wing began to incur a 
der fire: good deal of the fire of the Vladimir column. Bur- 
goyne, carrying one of the colors, was wounded; and the 
charge of the colors then devolving on Lieutenant Robert 
Hamilton, he also, in the next minute, was struck down by shot; 

but he quickly rose from the ground, recover ed his hold of the 
standard, and was able to carry it to the end of the battle. 

Their march Under this fire the battalion dressed its ranks with 
up fhe slope. precision, and marched forward in beautiful order. 

This it kept till its left wing encountered some of the clusters 
of men coming down fiom the Great Redoubt. Then, as we 
saw before, the battalion opened its ranks for the passage of 
the retr eating soldiery, and afterward formed up anew. This 
done, it marched on. 


' It happened to me afterward to see and wonder at the high courage and 
composure with which Annesley bore his dreadful wound. A musket-shot 
had entered his jaw, and passed, tearing its way through the mouth. The 
wound was of such a kind that it seemed as though nothing but death could 
be of use to him. Yet he was not only uncomplaining, but able to think and 
act for others, 


Cuap.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 573 


Meanwhile, General Codrington had been laboring to bring 
together the remnant of his brigade. Sergeant O’Connor, of 
the 23rd, still bore the color which he had been carrying with 
loving care through the worst stress of the fight. The miss- 
ing color of the 7th Fusileers, now committed to the honor of 
Codrington the 23rd, was borne by Captain Pearson. Around 
rallies sonte *f these two standards Codrington rallied such men 
LightDivision, aS he could gather, and made them open out and 
Bagh cite form line two deep. The body thus formed num- 
pe sbecbetes bered about 300 men, and Codrington was going 
eft by the cen- Peay : ° > 
tre battalion of tO Move it forward and place it on the left of the 
the Guards. Grenadier Guards, in order to fill up a part of the 
chasm which had been wrought in the Household Brigade by 
the discomfiture of its centre battalion. But it occurred to 
him—for he was himself a Guardsman, and he knew the feel- 
ings of the corps—that to place soldiers of the Line abreast 
of the Grenadiers, and in the room of the broken regiment, 
might give pain to a battalion of the Guards; so he sent to 
the Grenadiers to know if they would like troops to come up 
to fillthe empty space. The answer wasa proud one. It was 
also, perhaps, a rash answer ;? for the Vladimir column——vast 
His proposal and strong, with a sense of the power it had just 
tis Grengtier PUt forth—was impending over the left front of the 
Guards. Grenadiers, and confronting the interval which the 
defeat of the centre battalion left empty. However, the an- 
Contimea aa. SWeT was ‘No! and the Grenadiers, with their left 
vance ofthe flank stark open, but in beautiful order, contentedly 
ist Division. marched up the slope. 

A little later, and at a moment when the Grenadiers were 
halted on the slope, with the Vladimir column impending over 
Afterwara their left flank, Major Home of the 95th, and an en- 
some menof sign of the same corps, came bearing the colors of 
eaten 6their regiment, and having with them eight men. 


ment, and a : : 
pies crane; Home, accosting Colonel Hamilton, who command- 
of the sec . . ° 

Fasileer ed the left wing of the Grenadiers, said that the 
Guards, come ejoht men then following the colors of the ‘ Derby- 
andadvanceon JO , = 

the left of the Shire’ were all that remained together, and that he 
Grenadiers. — wished to take part with the Grenadiers in continu- 
ing the fight. Colonel Hamilton, assenting, told Home to fall 
in on the left of the Grenadiers. Afterward, other men of the 


‘Derbyshire’ came up and joined their colors. A few moments 


" The Scots Fusileer Guards. See ante, p. 572. 

2 It would be so, if the emergency was one in which three or four hundred 
men, hastily gathered from several broken regiments, were likely to do good. 
Upon the contrary supposition, the answer, of course, was a wise one. 


574 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar, XLIV. 


later, Colonel Berkeley came up, bringing with him a company 
of the Scots Fusileer Guards, which he had been able to rally, 
and he also was requested to place himself on the left of the 
Grenadiers. , 

On the left of the Grenadiers there was that chasm which 
had been wrought in the brigade of Guards by the defeat of 
its centre battalion; and on the left of the chasm there stood 
the ‘Coldstream.’ This battalion of the Guards confronted 
the centre and right of the great Vladimir column, and was 
drawn up in line with beautiful precision. Because of the po- 
sition of the ground on which it advanced, it had been much 
The Cold- less exposed to fire and mishaps than either of the 
ae other battalions of the brigade, and it had not been 
pressed forward, as each of the two other battalions had been, 
to meet any special emergency occurring on its front. There- 
fore it was that it fell to the lot of the Coldstream to become 
an almost prim sample of what our Guards can be in the mo- 
ment which precedes a close fight. What the best of battal- 
ions is when, in some Royal Park at home, it manceuvres be- 
fore a great princess, that the Coldstream was now on the 
banks of the Alma, when it came to show its graces to the 
enemy. And it was no ignoble pride which caused the bat- 
talion to maintain all thig ceremonious exactness; for though 
it be true that the precision of a line in peace-time is only a 
success in mechanics, the precision of a line on a hill-side, 
with the enemy close in front, is the result and the proof of a 
warlike composure. And it ought to be remembered—though 
our knowledge of the final result makes it hard to go back into 
the dark, trying dimly to measure the worth of deeds done in 
the hour of trial—it ought to be remembered that the under- 
taking of the troops in this part of the field was not an under- 
taking to swell the tide of victory, but to retrieve a disaster. 

Happily it is then, just then, after the discomfiture of troops 
The temper of 12 front, that English soldiery advaneing in support 
ce eee attain their highest glory. For by nature they are 

t SO constituted that the misfortune of their com- 


ing in support : y : 
aftera check yades carries no alarm into their ranks. It only 


sustained by 2 ° ° : 
theircom- heats their blood, rousing, as it seems, a sentiment 
imag akin to anger; and when they have thus been 


wrought upon, they are sterner men for a foe to have to do 
with than they are when all has gone well. 

The Duke of Cambridge was with this battalion, for its left 
was nearly in the centre of the troops over which his command 
extended. With it also there was a visitor whose presence 
showed the strength of the tie between the officer and his reg- 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 575 


iment. Colonel Steele had broken loose from his duty at 
Head-quarters, and was riding with his own beloved ‘ Cold- 
‘stream.’! 

Farther to the left, and in tlie same formation, 


Danio the three battalions ef the Highland brigade were 
brigade, extended. But the 42nd had found less difficulty 
42nd. 


93rd. 
| 


Bee Revs 2a A EB 
79th. 

than the 93rd in getting through the thick ground and the 
river, and, again, the 93rd had found less difficulty than the 
79th; so, as each regiment had been formed, and moved for- 
ward with all the speed it could command, the brigade fell 
naturally into direct échelon of regiments, the 42nd in front. 
And although this order was occasioned by the nature of the 
ground traversed and not by design, it was so well suited to 
the work in hand that Sir Colin Campbell did not for a mo- 
ment seek to change it. 

These young soldiers, distinguished to the vulgar eye by 
their tall stature, their tartan uniforms, and the plumes of their 
Highland bonnets, were yet more marked in the eyes of those 
who know what soldiers are by the warlike carriage of the 
men, and their strong, lithesome, resolute step. And Sir Col- 
in Campbell was known to be so proud of them, that already, 
like the Guards, they had a kind of prominence in the army, 
which was sure to make their bearing in action a broad mark 
for blame or for praise. 

From the time when General Buller had judged it right to 
abstain from bringing his force to the support of his comrades 
in the Great Redoubt, the two battalions which remained un- 
der his control had stood halted near the bank of the river, 
and one of them —the 88th—vwas still formed in a hollow 
square, as though expecting a charge of cavalry. Sir Colin 
Campbell conceived that this attitude of the 88th was unsuited 
to the time and the place, and not knowing that General Bul- 
ler in person was directing the regiment, Sir Colin, in some 
anger, took upon himself to request, nay, almost to command, 
that the hollow square should be instantly changed into line 
formation. When the ranks of the Highlanders came up to 


1 He was military secretary to Lord Raglan. 


576 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV, 


this part of the ground, and still went on continuing their ad- 
vance, a man of one of the halted regiments—a man speaking 
—perhaps in a coarse, cynic spirit, perhaps in the deep, honest 
bitterness of his heart — cried out, ‘Let the Scotchmen go 
‘on! they'll do the work! Then the Highlanders marched 
through, leaving General Buller and his two battalions in their 
rrear. 

It was upon Sir Colin Campbell now, as on General Buller 
a short time before, that there devolved the anxious duty of 
securing the Allied armies from any flank attack which might 
be undertaken against them at a moment when our troops 
were engaging the enemy in front; and Sir Colin at one mo- 
ment judged that with the battalion which formed his extreme 
left he ought to stand ready to show a front in any direction. 
He therefore sent Sterling to direct that the 79th should go 
into column.! 

But, seen in the dim field of battle, an enemy’s force bears 
marked on its front faint, delicate, momentous signs, analogous 
to those which, in speaking of a man or a woman, are called 

‘expressions of countenance;’ and it is given to men who know 
and love the business of war to be able to read those signs. 
Sir Colin Campbell well understood that the enemy ought to 
assail his left flank with a storm of horse, foot, and artillery ; 
and, to deal with any such onslaught, he at first took care to 
stand ready; but when he came to ride forward and gain 
higher eround, the old soldier was able to divine that with all 
their three thousand Jancers, and all their columns of infantry, 
the Russians would venture nothing against his flank. He 
therefore recalled his order to the 79th, and allowed it to go 
forward in line. 

Including the chasm which divided the Grenadier Guards 
from the Coldstream, the whole line in which the Duke of 
Cambridge now moved forward to the attack of the Kourgané 
_ Hill was more than a mile and a halfin Jength.? It was only 


' It is from a body of troops massed in column that the greatest variety of 
manceuvres can be quickly and safely evolved. When a battalion extended 
in line is called upon to change ‘ts front, the radius of the segment in which 
it must wheel is of course very long. 

* The Ist Division was upon a greater front than had been covered by the 
47th Regiment, Pennefather’s brigade, and the Light Division; yet it did 
not cover a foot more of ground than was right. We before saw the effect 
produced by trying to put ten battalions upon ground which was now found 
to be not more than enough for six. It is hardly necessary to say that a 
knowledge of the quantity of ground covered by a single battalion in a bar- 
rack-yard would not give a sufficient clew for getting at the extent of ground 
which was covered by six battalions drawn up in line upon a field of battle. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 577 


two deep; but its right regiment was supported by a part of 
Sir Richard England’s Division ; and Sir George Cathcart was 
on its left rear with the part of his Division then on the field. 
On the extreme left and left rear of the whole force, there was 
the cavalry under Lord Lucan. | 

These troops were going to take part in the first approach 
The nature of tO Close strife which men had yet seen on that day 
the fight now between bodies of troops in a state of formation 
about to take : = : 
piaceonthe deliberately marshaled against each other.1 The 
Kourgane Hill. slender red line which began near the bridge, and 
vanished from the straining sight on the eastern slopes of the 
Kourgané Hill, was a thread which in any one part of it had 
the strength of only two men. But along the whole line from 
east to west these files of two men each were strong in the 
exercise of their country’s great prerogative. They were in 
English array. _They were fighting in line against column. 
_ After the rupture of the peace of Amiens, Sir Arthur Wel- 
lesley, being then in India, became singularly changed, grow- 
ing every day more and more emaciated, and seemingly more 
and more sad. He pined; and was like a man dying without 
any known bodily illness, the prey of some consuming thought. 
_ At length he suddenly annotinéed to Lord Wellesley his re- 
solve to go back to England; and when he was asked why, 
he said, ‘I observe that in Europe the French are fighting in 
‘column, and carrying every thing before them, and I am sure 
‘that I ought to go home directly, because I know that our 
‘men can fight in line’ From that simple yet mighty faith 
he never swerved; for, always encountering the massive col- 
umns of infantry, he always was ready to meet them with his 
slender line of two deep. With what result the world knows.? 


Sir Colin Campbell was free to take ground to his left, and he took it am- 
ply, contriving to outflank, or almost to outflank, the enemy’s infantry array. 

‘The French had not been engaged in any conflicts of this sort; for, 
though the head of Canrobert’s Division confronted formed troops for a mo- 
ment at a distance of a few hundred yards, it dropped back, as we saw, with. 
out fighting. Evans's struggle had been in thick ground, not allowing regular 
array. Codrington’s people (including Lacy Yea’s Fusileers as well as the 
stormers of the redoubt) had had hard fighting, and against troops in perfect 
order, but they had gone through their struggles without the advantage of 
being themselves in a state of formation. 

* An account of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s pining sickness, his ‘‘ wasting 
away,” as he himself described it, is given in published accounts of men who 
remarked it (in Malcolm’s book, I think, or Monro’s), and his disclosure of 
the motive which caused him to return to Europe was preserved and handed 
down by Lord Wellesley. What U have ventured to do is to seem to connect 
the pining sickness with the mighty resolve which was destined to change the 
fate of the world. 


VoLud.—B5 B . 


578 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV, 


Long years had passed since the close of those great wars, 
and now, once more in Europe there was going to be waged 
yet again the old strife of line against column. 

Looking down a smooth, gentle, green slope, checkered red 
with the slaughtered soldiery who had stormed the redoubt, 
the front-rank men of the great Vladimir column were free to 
gaze upon two battalions of the English Guards, far apart the 
one from the other, but each carefully drawn up in line; and 
now that they saw more closely, and without the distractions 
of artillery, they had more than ever grounds for their wonder 
at the kind of array in which the English soldiery were under- 
taking to assail them. ‘ We were all astonished,’ says Choda- 
siewicz— yet he wrote of what he saw when the English line 
was much less close to the foe than the Guards now were— 
‘We were all astonished at the extraordinary firmness with 
‘which the red-jackets, having crossed the river, opened a 
‘heavy fire in line upon the redoubt. This was the most ex- 
‘traordinary thing to us, as we had never before seen troops 
‘fight in lines of two deep, nor did we think it possible for 
‘men to be found with sufficient firmness of morale to be able 
‘to attack, in this apparently weak formation, our massive col- 
umns.’ But soon the men of the column began to see that 
though the scarlet line was slender, it was very rigid and ex- 
act. Presently, too, they saw that even when the Grenadiers 
or the Coldstreams began to move, the long line of the black 
bearskins still kept a good deal of its straightness, and that 
here on the bloody slope, no less than in the barrack-yard at 
home, the same moment was made to serve for the tramp of a 
thousand feet. 


XXXI. 

Beginning on our right hand with the Grenadier Guards, 
and going thence leftward to the Coldstream, and, lastly, to the 
Highland brigade, we shall now see what manner of strife it 
was when at length, after many a hinderance, five British bat- 
talions, each grandly formed in line, marched up to the enemy’s 
columns. 

Advancing upon the immediate left of the ground already 
won by Pennefather’s brigade, the Grenadiers were covered 
on their right, but their left was bare; and it was in that di- 
rection—in the direction of their left front—that the Vladimir 
battalions stood impending. The Grenadiers were marching 
against the defeated, but now rallied column, which had fought . 
= with the 7th Fusileers, when Prince Gortschakoff, * 

rince Gorts- 3 - 5 ; 
chakoff’s ad- having just ridden up to the two left battalions of 


The Ouglitz N N 
Daivations N N SECOND FIGHT ON THE KoURGANE HILL, 
The Guards engaged. 


keght Sousdut 


Coliumiv a 


> Rusileers reformung 


Gdrington 7 ng, some of the 
pide ant hes Lage ee ee 


f thik 
~ Sp 99% 
4 St Ba diad hasta te broken BSE GSE IF hag 


Portions. of the 


ch 4d ca etaded 4 sd 5 pod wih bycee® 


580 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


vance witha the Vladimir, undertook to lead them forward. 
column of the ° : : : 
Vladimir First sending his only unwounded aid-de-camp to 


BU ge press the advance of any troops he could find, the 
Prince put himself at the head of the two left Vladimir bat- 
talions, and ordered them to charge with the bayonet.! The 
Prince then rode forward a good deal in advance of his troops, 
and his order for a bayonet charge was so far obeyed, that the 
column, without firing a shot, moved boldly down toward the 
chasm which had been left in the centre of our brigade of 
Guards. The northwest angle of this strong and hitherto vic- 
torious column was coming down nearer and nearer to the 
file—the file composed of only two men—which formed the 
extreme left of the Grenadiers. 

Then, and by as fair a test as war could apply, there was 
Colonel Hooa’s tried the strength of the line formation, the quality 
maneuvre. of the English officer, the quality of the English 
soldier. Colonel Hood first halted, and then caused the left 
subdivision of thé left company to wheel—to wheel back in 
such a way as to form, with the rest of the battalion, an obtuse 
angle. The manceuvre was executed by Colonel Percy (he was 
wounded just at this time) under the directions of Colonel 
Hamilton, the officer in command of the left wing. In this 


1 T must acknowledge that I do not gather from the Russian accounts any 
distinct mention of this separation of the great Vladimir column into two 
columns of two battalions each. Prince Gortschakoif’s narrative speaks of 
the column with which he moved as ‘the battalions of the Vladimir regiment 
‘standing on the left of the epaulement’ (the breastwork), and this is an ex- 
pression which might either apply to two battalions which had been sepa- 
rated from the other two, or it might apply to all the four battalions of the 
corps. I have, however, found it so impracticable to reconcile this last in- 
terpretation with known facts, that I have adopted the former one. Upon 
this point I am not in terms helped by Kvetzinski’s narrative; but as he him- 
self was clearly with some of the Vladimir battalions all this time, and as he 
had no knowledge of the fact that Gortschakoff had made a charge with 
battalions of the same corps, it seems to follow as a necessary consequence 
that at this time the four battalions had been divided into two columns. A — 
concurrence of circumstances leads me to infer that this was the case, and 
that one of the columns, as I have stated, was toward the right and the other 
toward the left of the redoubt. At first sight it may seem odd that Kvetzin- 
ski, the divisional general, should not know what was being done with two 
of his battalions posted at only a small distance from the column with which 
he rode; but the truth is that Gortschakoff, having for the time the supreme 
command: in this part of the field, and being (as is evident from his own ac- 
count) in a high state of excitement, rode up to the Vladimir battalions, 
which he found near the (Russian) left of the earthwork, and, so to speak, 
snatched them without saying a word to the general commanding the Divi- 
sion. After all, the movement which he made in advance was only a slight 
one; and for that reason, perhaps, it was hardly looked upon as severing the 
troops taking part in it from those which remained with Kvetzinski. 


Cuap. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 581 


way, whilst he still faced the column which he had originally 
undertaken to attack, Colonel Hood showed another front, a 
small, but smooth, comely front, to the mass which was coming 
upon his flank. His manceuvre instantly brought the Vladimir 
to a halt; and to those who—without being near enough to 


Russian Column, 


Grenadier Guards. 


hear the giving and the repeating of the orders—still were 
able to see Colonel Hood thus changing a part of his front 
and stopping a mighty column by making a bend in his line, 
it seemed that he was handling his fine, slender English blade 
with a singular grace; with the gentleness and grace of the 
skilled swordsman, when, smiling all the while, he parries an 
angry thrust. In the midst of its pride and vast 
strength of numbers, the Vladimir found itself 
checked; nay, found itself gravely engaged with half a compa- 
ny of our Guardsmen; and the minds of these two score of 
islanders were so little inclined to bend under the weight of 
the column, that they kept their perfect array. Their fire was 
deadly, for it was poured into a close mass of living men. It 
was at the work of “file firing” that the whole battalion now 
labored. | 

On the left of the interval wrought by the displacement of 
The Cold- the centre battalion of the Guards, the Coldstream, 
ategam, drawn up in superb array, began to open its smart, 
crashing fire upon the more distant battalions which formed 
the right wing of the Vladimir force. 

We shall see the share which other Russian and other Brit- 
ish troops were destined to have in governing the result of the 
struggle; but if, for a moment, we limit our reckoning to the 
troops which stood fighting at this time, it appears that the 
whole of the four Vladimir battalions and the lessened mass 
of the left Kazan column were engaged with the Grenadiers 
The Grena. 2d the Coldstream. In other words, two English 
diers and the battalions, each ranged in line,.but divided the one 
cheneelaitn from the other by a very broad chasm, were con- 
six battalions tending with six battalions in column. And, al- 
mak teak though of these six battalions standing in column 
there were two which had cruelly suffered, the remaining four 


Its effect. 


582 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuarp. XLIV, 


had hitherto had no hard fighting, and were flushed with the 
thought that they stood on ground which they themselves had 
reconquered. 

But, after all, if only the firmness of the slender English line 
ive Siess should chance to endure, there was nothing except 
which aline the almost chimerical event of a thorough charge 
puts upon the : > lone 5 
soldiery ofa home with the bayonet which could give to the col- 
pela. umns the ascendency due to their vast weight and 
numbers; for the fire from a straitened, narrow front could 
comparatively do little harm, whilst the fire of the battalion in 
line was carrying havoc into the living masses. Still, neither 
column nor line gave way. On the other hand, neither column 
nor line moved forward. Fast rooted as yet to the ground, the 
groaning masses of the Russians and the two scarlet strings 
of Guardsmen stood receiving and delivering their fire. 

But meanwhile, on the part of the English, another mind, 
as we shall see by-and-by, was bringing its strength to bear 
upon this part of the battle. 

If the English method of array puts a grievous stress upon 
Andupona the soldiery of Continental masses, its pressure is 
te eile not less hard upon the mind of a general who has 
columns. the suffering columns in his charge. It not only 
shocks him by the sight of a great slaughter of his people oc- 
curring in small spaces of ground ; it not only forces upon him 
a sense of being outflanked, but sometimes, it even seems, op- 
presses him with a belief that he is overwhelmed by mighty 
numbers. General Kvetzinski was with the right Vladimir 
column. He was a brave, able man, and we have already seen 
something of what the relative numbers were with which the 
Russians ang the English were fighting ; but it seems that the 
Impressions as SPeCtacle of the immense front presented by the 
wrought upon Knglish army broke down the General’s sense of 
ieretmtnaia by his own comparative strength, and put upon him 
the English ar- the belief that he was cruelly outnumbered. Even 

<i the sight of the wide chasm there was between the 

two battalions of the Guards did not lift the weight from his 
heart. ‘The enormous forces,’ said he—‘ the enormous forces 
‘of the enemy made our position a very dangerous one.’ 

It was near the eastern shoulder of the redoubt that he sat 
in his saddle. Every moment he had been growing more anx- 
ious, for, besides the troubles that were besetting his front, he 
could not but know that Pennefather’s brigade was establish- 
ed in the Pass, and the apparition of our Head-Quarter Staff on 
the knoll, followed quick by Turner’s guns, had cheated him 
into the notion that the whole French army was marching 


Cuap. XLIV.) INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 583 


straight eastward into the English field of battle. Nay, he im- 
agined that the guns on the knoll were throwing a flanking 
fire into the left of his Vladimir battalions ;'! and, indeed, it 
would seem that these battalions were really struck—not by 
cannon on the knoll, but—by some guns just put in battery on 
one of the spurs overlooking the Pass.?- But now, when he 
looked to his right; when he looked slantwise down to the 
east of where the Coldstream stood ranged, he saw an array 
of tall plumes, having eight times the front of one of his own 
battalion columns ; looking a little farther eastward, he saw 
another array which, though it was not yet so near, was like 
to the first, and was moving. Again, when he looked still far- 
ther eastward, he saw yet another array coming up, and though 
it was less near than the first, and even less near than the sec- 
ond, it was like to either of them in the greatness of its front, 
and the towering plumes of the men. Kvetzinski could see 
that, taken together, these three lines of plumed soldiers had a 
front some twenty times broader than one of his battalion col- 
umns, and (still, it seems, suffering himself to infer vast num- 
bers from mere extent of front) he began to have that tortur- 
ing sense of being outnumbered and outflanked which weigh- 
ed upon the memory and forever replenished the diction of the 


1 He was wrong inthis. Turner’s guns tried their range against the col- 
umns on the Kourganeé Hill, but found the distance too great. The passage ' 
in which Kvetzinski speaks of the state of things in the direction of ‘the 
‘knoll’ is this:—‘ From the left the French, having forced our left wing fore- 
‘posts, were hurrying to the rescue of their allies, whose efforts were begin- 
‘ning to flag before the unheard-of and unparalleled heroism of the brave 
*Viadimirtzi, The French battery, having taken up its position on the left 
‘wing of our side’ (this so called ‘‘ French battery” was Turner’s battery on 
the knoll), ‘began to fire sideways on the fast thinning ranks of our gallant 
‘regiment. Their reserve were hastening to cut off our retreat.’ [have al-_ 
ready shown how all but inevitable it was that Kvetzinski and all other Rus- 
sians on the Kourgane Hill should make this mistake, should suppose that 
the group of plumed officers in blue frocks who crowned the knoll betokened 
the presence of the French army in that part of the field, and that Turner's 
guns were a French battery. If amongst the French or their friends there 
are any men so constituted as to wish to keep the benefit derived from this 
mistake, their best course will be to quote this passage from Kvetzinski, and 
to suppress the explanation which shows how his error arose. For the sake 
of fairness, and not without a foresight of the wrongful use which may be 
made of the passage, I give what I believe to be a close and accurate trans- 
lation from the Russian words in which it was written. 

2 T rest this belief entirely upon the authority of Colonel Hamley’s soldierly 
narrative, ‘The Campaign of Sebastopol,’ p.31. Colonel Hamley was him- 
self in the artillery, and all that he says respecting the operations of the arm 
to which he belonged has of course a peculiar value. The guns were some 
of those thirty pieces of ordnance which Evans and Sir Richard England had 
just brought into the Pass. 


584 INVASION OF THE CRIMEM. [(Cuar. XLIV: 


warlike Psalmist. It seemed to him that the enemy ‘ increased 
‘upon him to trouble him;’ that ‘the nations compassed him 
‘round about; that they ‘came round about him like water; 
that they ‘kept him in on every side; yea, that they kept him 
‘in on every side.’ This anxiety was all wrongly based. Far 
from having his whole array outflanked toward the east to any » 
woeful extent, Kvetzinski had a column on his extreme right 
which fairly enough confronted the extreme left of the En olish 
infantry; and, far ‘indeed from being outnumbered, he was fight- 
ing this fieht of the Kourgané Hill with a str ength of nearly 
three against two; but it followed, from the difference between 
his and his enemy’s manner of fighting, that each of his col- 
umns, taken separately, was widely outflanked, and he was be- 
coming an example of what must happen to the commander of 
columns when (without exerting his weight by trying to charge 
home with the bayonet) he strives to “set his dense masses 
against troops standing firmly in line. 

Presently he saw that the ar ray of plumed soldiers which 
The sight ofa had stood ranged next to the Coldstream was mov- 
battalion ad. ing—was moving up—was moving swiftly; and he 

ancing upon 

his right front Knew that the nearest of the columns w high he had 
convinces im on his right was so far from the ground where he 
move, stood, and so hindered, too, by the interv ening dip 
_ of the ground, as to be unable to engage the new-comers be- 
fore the moment when (unless he retreated) they would reach 
the flank of his right Vladimir battalions. On the other hand, 
he could not, in common prudence, stand still and wait to be 
turned by the battalion now gliding up the slope on his right ; 
for, brave as were his Vladimir men, a huge, massive Russian 
column was not the delicate weapon with which he could try 
to imitate Colonel Hood, showing a front at once on two sides. 
Therefore it became but too clear to him that the columns 
along the redoubt must move to some ground other than 
where they were. And this almost instantly, for the bending 
plumes did not cease from coming. 

But, also, all this while the columns along the redoubt were 
Meantime the more and more feeling the stress that was put upon 
fhewedubtas, them by the fire and the ar ray of the Guards. Just 


the redoubt are ews 

becoming dis- after the moment when the Vladimir men were 
tressed by . . 
their fight with brought to a halt by Colonel Hood’s maneeuvre, 
the Grenadiers Prince Gortschakoff, still riding at the head of the 
stream. column, was violently thrown to the ground. He 
had received no wound from the shot which caused his fall, 
but his charger was killed by it; and, there being no other 


horsemen near, he was obliged to remain on foot. It would 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 585 


seem that the concussion of the fall may have clouded his judg- 
ment. At all events, after this accident he walked away to- 
ward a column which he saw coming down in support.!. On 
his road he passed through the site of the Great Redoubt, 
and there found General Kvetzinski. The Prince, walking up 
to the divisional general, told him that he had had his horse 
shot under him, and that all the field-officers of the regiment? 
he commanded had been killed. It is not stated that the two 
Generals, thus meeting at a critical moment, took occasion to 
consult about the way in which they should fight out the bat- 
tle. When their conversation had ended, Prince Gortschakoff 
walked up the hill-side, going on toward the column which he 
wanted to meet.? . 

The shot which dismounted Prince Gortschakoff, his depart- 
ure from the ground where the Vladimir stood, the spruce 
beauty of the slender red line which had brought it to bay, | 
and the steadiness of the fire with which the brave column had 
been plied for now several minutes —all these were causes 
which helped to distress the left Vladimir battalions ; and al- 
though it was the turning movement on the right of the Rus- 
sian columns which made it a thing of sheer need to move, 
and to move at once,‘ still it would seem that General Kvet- 
zinski’s measures for dealing with the new emergency were 
forestalled by what he presently saw on his left front; and the 
event which was destined to put its actual and direct govern- 
ance upon this part of the battle was the still pending fight be- 
tween the left Vladimir battalions and the Grenadier Guards. 

The Grenadiers, when we left them just now, were busy 
Continuanceof With their rifles along their whole line, and were 
the fight be- making good use of that delicate bend in the forma- 
Grenadier — tion of their leftmost company which enabled them 
fief Vina. tO pour their fire into the heart of the Vladimir 
mircolumn. golumn then hanging on their flank. The reckon- 
ing of him who puts his trust in column is mainly based on the 


1 The four Ouglitz battalions. 

* Meaning, I imagine, the Kazan Fusileers, 

* All this is told by Prince Gortschakoff himself with simplicity and ap- 
parent truthfulness. It is plain that his fall had shaken and confused him 

* Kvetzinski says: ‘The decisive moment I had been fearing and expect~ 
‘ing had arrived: the English moved higher up in three lines, and threat- 
‘ened to turn our right wing.’ 

° ‘The left wing,’ he says, ‘began to falter, leaving my left side exposed.’ 
I understand him to be speaking of troops on the immediate left of the col- 
umn with which he was riding, and not of any troops on the left of the whole 
Division which he commanded, because the retreat of the troops in tae Pass 
had taken place before the time of which he is speaking. 

BB2 


586 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


notion that its mere grandeur of aspect will give it a clear as- 
cendant as soon as it is seen at all near; and when the English 
line had once delivered its fire, the front-rank men of the col- 
umn were not without grounds for making sure that their next 
glimpse of the red-coats would be a glimpse of men in retreat; 
for to have come forward to within a distance convenient for 
musket-shots, and to have once delivered their fire, this was 
surely the utmost in the way of close fighting that files of only 
two men each would attempt against masses. But when, 
though only a little, the smoke began to lift, the gleams that 
pierced it were the light that is shed from bayonet points and 
busy ramrods—gleams twinkling along the line of the two 
ranks of soldiery, who still, as it seemed, must be lingering in 
their strange array; and whenever the smoke lifted clear, 
there—steadfast as oaks disclosed by rising mist—the long 
avenue of the Bearskins loomed out, and so righteously in 
place as to begin to enforce a surmise that, after all, the files 
of the two men each might be minded to stand where they 
were, ceremoniously shooting into the column, and filling it 
minute by minute with the tumult of men killed or wounded. 
And though it was but a few of the men planted close in the 
massive columns who could thus from time to time look upon 
the dim forms of the soldiery who dealt the slaughter, yet: the 
anxiousness of those who could gain no glimpse of the Bear- 
skins was not for that reason the less. Nay, it was the great- 
er; for he who knows of a present danger through his reading 
of other men’s countenances, or by seeing his neighbors fall 
wounded or killed around him, is commonly more disturbed 
than he who, standing in the front, looks straight into the eye 
of the storm. | 

Still, up to this time it was only from the extreme left of the 
Grenadiers’ line that fire was poured into the column. A hard- 
er trial was awaiting the Vladimir men. Colonel Hood had 
hitherto wielded his line as though he judged it right to deal 
carefully with the left Kazan battalions still lingering on his 
front; and up to the last, he did not think himself warranted 
in disdaining their presence; for he could not know that their 
loss in officers had made them so helpless as they were; but 
he now saw enough to assure him that his real foe was the 
left Vladimir column on his flank. Thither, therefore (though 
he would not altogether avert his line from the defeated troops 
in his front), he now determined to bend the eyes and the ri- 
fles of a great portion of his battalion. So he wheeled for- 
ward his battalion upon its left, or in other, and perhaps the 
more expressive form of military speech, he ‘ brought forward 


Cuap. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 587 


‘his right shoulder.’ Still respecting the presence of the de- 
feated Kazan troops, he did not carry this manceuvre so far as 
to place his battalion bodily on the flank of the Vladimir col- 
umn, but he carried it far enough to make the column a mark 
for the troops which formed his left wing: The Vladimir was 


Viadimir column. 


Grenadier Guards. 


wrapped in fire: was wrapped in that fire which is hardly tol- 
erable to soldiery massed in column—fire poured upon its 
flank. Even this, for some minutes, the brave Vladimir bore. 

If the voice of the English soldier is heard loud in fight, 
his shout may be the shout of triumph achieved, or-else—and 
then it is of a thousand-fold higher worth—it may be the like 
of what used to foretoken the crisis of the old Peninsular bat- 
tles, when, late in the day, the voice of ‘the Light Division’ 
was heard—the almost inspired utterance by which the sol- 
dier, growing suddenly conscious of an overmastering power, 
declares and makes known his ascendant. Oftwo things hap- 
pening in a field of battle at nearly the same time, it is often 
hard to say which was the first, and yet upon that narrow pri- 
ority of a few moments there may depend the question of 
which event was the cause and which the effect. What peo- 
ple know is, that there was an instant when the Vladimir col- 
umn was seen to look hurt and unstable, and that, either at 
the same instant, or the instant before, or the instant after, the 
Grenadiers were hurrahing on their left, hurrahing at their cen- 
tre, hurrahing along their whole line. As though its term of 
life were measured, as though its structure were touched and 
sundered by the very cadence of the cheering, the column 
bulged, heaving, heaving. ‘The line will advance on the cen- 
‘tre! The men may advance firing.’ This, or this nearly, was 
what Hood had to say to his Grenadiers. Instant sounded 
the echo of his will. ‘The line will advance on the centre! 
‘Quick mareh!’ Then, between the column and the seeing of 
its fate, the cloud which hangs over a modern battle-field was 
no longer a sufficing veil; for although, whilst the English bat- 
talion stood halted, there lay in front of its line that dim, mys- 
tic region which divides contending soldiery, yet the Bear- 
Defeat ofthe &Kins, since now they were marching, grew darker 
left Viadimir from east to west, grew taller, grew real, broke 


588 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [CHap. XLIV. 


column, and of through. .A moment, and the column hung loose. 

the left Kazan A ata : , : : : ee 

Sat nitoda nother, and it was lapsing into sheer retreat. 
Yet another, and it had come to be like a throng in 

confusion. Of the left Kazan troops there was no more ques- 

tion. In an array which was all but found fault with for being 

too grand and too stately, the English battalion swept on.) 

Seeing that, before many moments were over, the Grenadiers 
Kvetzinaa's  WOUld be up in the redoubt, Kvetzinski conceived 

vetzinski’s A 

oblique move- that his retreat by the great road was already cut 
ment wcee* off, and he ordered that the right Vladimir column 
Viadimir col- —the column with which he was present—should 
ae move from the field obliquely, avoiding the English 
right. This was a path which would take the column along 
the eastern skirts of the Kourgané Hill, and bring it toward 
the spot where the right Kazan column stood posted. Kvet- 
zinski, still firm and soldierly, charged a few of his men with 
the duty of covering his retreat ; and, intrusting the command 
of this little rear-guard to Ensign Berestofisky, gave orders 
that the march should be leisurely. He was not ill obeyed ; 
but the movement was hardly one which could be executed 
with all the accustomed dignity of Russian troops in retreat, 
for the column had to move slantwise across the front of the 
battalion which was swiftly ascending the hill, and, if it were 
to lose many moments, the plumed soldiery would be on its 
flank. | 

The left wing of the Grenadiers was quickly in the part of 
The Duke of the battery where lay the dismounted howitzer, 
Cambridgeis and, on the opposite or eastern shoulder of the 
GreatRedoubt. work, the Duke of Cambridge, riding up with the 
Coldstreams, stood master of the Great Redoubt. 

In its retreat, the right Vladimir column was still plied with 
Kvetzinekiig the fire of the Coldstream. General Kvetzinski 
wounded and had his horse shot under him; and presently after- 
jie ward he was so wounded in the leg as to be una- 
ble to move on foot. The soldiers around formed a litter for 
him with their muskets, and the brave man, causing his bear- 
ers to march with the rear guard, continued to give his or- 
ders to Ensign Berestoffsky. Presently, however, he was again 
struck by shot, and, indeed, he was now almost shattered, be- 
ing wounded in two of his limbs and in the side. To the last 
he had comported himself as a good soldier. 


? The criticism alluded to in this sentence was that of a French officer 
who witnessed the advance of the Guards. After speaking of it with enthu- 
siastic admiration, he ended by saying that it was ‘too majestic’-—‘ trop ma- 
‘jestueux.’ 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 689 


XXXII. 

But whose was the mind which had freshly come to bear 
upon this part of the fight, and what was the plumed array 
which, threatening Kvetzinski on his right front, forbade him 
from farther tarrying on the line of the Great Redoubt?  Be- 
fore the moment when the Guards and the columns began 
Sir Colin their fight, Sir Colin Campbell was sitting in his sad- 
conception of ale by the left of the Coldstream, and talking from 
the parthe time to time with the Duke of Cambridge. The 
whe ig. Veteran was watching for his time. And although 
gade. the ground before him favored the concealment of 
troops, yet his skill in the reading of a field of battle had ena- 
bled him to see, or in some way know or divine that what 
forces the Russians had on the right of the Great Redoubt 
were all more or less held back. So,if he could swiftly move 
up a battalion to the crest which rose straight before him, he 
would be on the flank of the position from which the Vladimir 
confronted the Guards before any other battalions could come 
down to engage him. Upon descrying his advance, the Rus- 
sians, he thought, would see the instant need of abandoning 
their struggle — with the Guards; but if by chance, or because 
of their obstinacy, they should fail to do so, then, as soon as he 
could reach the ground he longed for, he ‘would bring round 
the left shoulder, turn full toward the west, and roll” up the 
Muscovite columns before their supports could come down to 
save them. This was what he thought might be done, and 
the keen, perfect weapon with which to do it had come fresh 
into his hand. The other battalions of the Highland brigade 
The 42.4 was Were approaching; but the 42nd —the far-famed 
athisside, = ¢ Black Watch’ —had already come up. It was 
ranged in line. The ancient glory of the corps was a treasure 
now committed to the charge of young soldiers new to battle ; 
but Campbell knew them, was sure of their excellence, and was 
sure, too, of Colonel Cameron, their commanding officer. Very 
eager—for the Guards were now engaged with the enemy’s 
columns — very eager, yet silent and majestic, the battalion 
stood ready. 

Before the action had begun, and whilst his men were still 
Sir Colin in column, Campbell had spoken. to his brigade a 
Gotcha few words—words simple, and for the most part 
brigade. workmanlike, yet touched with the fire of warlike 
sentiment. ‘Now, men, you are going into action. Remem- 
‘ber this: Whoever is wounded-—I don’t care what his rank 
‘is—whoever is wounded must lie where he falls till the bands- 


590 ’ INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


‘men come to attend td him. No soldiers must go carrying 
‘off wounded men. If any soldier does such a thing, his name 
‘shall be stuck up in his parish church. Don’t be in a hur- 
‘ry about firing. Your officers will tell you when it is time 
‘to open fire. Be steady. Keep silence. Fire low. Now, 
‘men’—those who know the old soldier can tell how his voice 
would falter the while his features were kindling— now, men, 
‘the army will watch us; make me proud of the Highland 
‘ brigade !! 
It was before the battle that this, or the like of this, was ad- 
Their engage Cressed to the brigade; and now, when Sir Colin 
tral Ruan LOde up to the corps which awaited his signal, he 
columns. only gave it two words. But because of his accus- 
tomed manner of utterance, and because he was a true, faith- 
ful lover of war, the two words he spoke were as the roll of 
the drum: ‘Forward, 42nd! This was all he then said; and, 
‘as a steed that knows his rider,’ the great heart of the battal- 
ion bounded proudly to his touch. 

Sir Colin Campbell went forward in front of the 42nd, but 
before he had ridden far he saw that his reckoning was al- 
ready made good by the event, and that the column which 
had engaged the Coldstream was moving off obliquely toward 
its right rear. Then, with his staff, he rode up a good way in 
advance, for he was switt to hope that the withdrawal of the 
column from the line of the redoubt might give him the means 
of learning the ground before him, and seeing how the enemy’s 
strength was disposed in this part of the field. In a few mo- 
ments he was abreast of the redoubt, and upon the ridge or 
crest which divided the slope he had just ascended from the 
broad and rather deep hollow which lay before him. On his 
right, he had the now empty redoubt; on his right front, the 
hie cher slopes of the Kourgané Hill. Str aight before him there 
was the hollow, or basin, just spoken of, bounded on its farther 
side by a swelling wave or ridge of ground which he called 
the ‘inner crest.’ Beyond that, whilst he looked straight be- 
fore him, he could see that the ground fell off into a valley; 
but when he glanced toward, his left front, he observed that 
the hollow which lay on his front was, so to speak, bridged 

‘ Of course, the memory of those who unexpectedly found themselves hear- 
ing Sir Colin’s address to his brigade can supply but an imperfect record of 
the words which were uttered; and perhaps, if the impressions of any great 
number of the hearers were compared, few or none would be found to be 
closely similar. I think, however, that the address given in the text is not 
grossly wide of the truth. At all events, I can answer for the substantial ac- 
euracy of the injunction against quitting the ranks in order to carry off 
wounded men. 


Cuar. XL@V.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 59] 


over by a bending rib which connected the inner with the outer 
crest—bridged over in such a way that a column on his left 
front might march to the spot where he stood without having 
first to descend into the lower ground. More to his left, the 
ground was high, but so undulating and varied that it would 
not necessarily disclose any troops which might be posted in 
that part of the field. 

Confronting Sir Colin Campbell from the other side of the 
hollow, the enemy had a strong column—the two right battal- 
ions of the Kazan corps—and it was toward this body that 
the Vladimir column, moving off from the line of the redoubt, 
was all this time making its way. The Russians saw that they 
were the subject of a general officer’s studies ; and Campbell’s 
horse at this time was twice struck by shot, but not disabled. 
When the retiring column came abreast of the right Kazan 
column, it faced about to the front, and, striving to recover its 
formation, took part with the Kazan column in opposing a 
strength of four battalions—four battalions hard-worked and 
much thinned—to the one which, eager and fresh, was tollow- 
ing the steps of the Highland General. Looking toward his 
left front, and along the natural bridge or viaduct which has 
just been spoken of, Sir Colin Campbell saw another column 
much heavier than either of the two which confronted him. 
This heavy column was composed of two battalions of the 
Sousdal corps, and it was of greater size and strength than the 
Vladimir and the Kazan columns, because it was as yet un- 
touched. A column formed of the two remaining Sousdal bat- 
talions—battalions also untouched—was on the extreme right 
of the enemy’s infantry position, but so placed that at this mo- 
ment it could not be seen by Campbell. On the higher slopes 
of the Kourgané Hill, the four Ouglitz battalions stood impend 
ing over the scene of the coming fight, and these battalions 
were also untouched.. With three battalions Sir Colin Camp- 
bell was about to engage no less than twelve;! but the three 
were in line, and the twelve were massed in five columns. 


1 Taking the eight untouched Russian battalions at 6000, and supposing 
the four thinned battalions to have been reduced by one third, i. e., from 
3000 to 2000, the Russian force here engaging would be 8000; and if the 
numbers of the Highland brigade be put at 2500, it results that the numbers 
of the Russians were to those of Sir Colin as 16 to 5, or rather more than 3 
tol. Ifit be thought fairer to exclude the Onglitz column (on the ground 
that its soldiery did not actually exchange fire with the Highlanders, and 
might therefore be regarded as counterbalanced by the force under Cathcart), 
the numbers of the Russians actually engaging Sir Colin Campbell would be to 
the Highland brigade in a proportion of exactly two to one. This compari- 
son of numbers is given in order to convey a true idea of the nature of the 


592 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cm@ar. XLIV. 


Few were the moments that Campbell took to learn the 
ground before him, and to read the enemy’s mind; but, few 
though they were, they were all but enough to bring the 42nd 
to the crest where their General stood. ‘The ground they had 
to ascend was a good deal more steep and more broken than 
the slope close beneath the Redoubt. In the land where those 
Scots were bred, there are shadows of sailing clouds skimming 
straight up the mountain’s side, and their paths are rugged, 
are steep, yet their course is smooth, easy, and swift.. Smooth- 
ly, easily, swiftly, the ‘ Black Watch’ seemed to glide up the 
hill. A few instants before, and their tartans ranged dark in 
the valley. Now their plumes were on its crest. The small 
knot of horsemen who had ridden on before them were still 
there. Any stranger looking into the group might almost be 
able to know—might know by the mere carriage of the head 
—that he in the plain, dark-colored frock, he whose sword-belt 
hung crosswise from his shoulder, was the man there charged 
with command; for in battle men who have to obey sit erect 
in their saddles; he who has on him the care of the fight seems 
always to fall into the pensive, yet eager bend which the Greeks 
—keen perceivers of truth—used to join with their conception 
of Mind brought to bear upon War. It is on board ship per- 
haps more commonly than ashore that people in peace-time 
have been used to see their fate hanging upon the skill of one 
man. Often Jandsmen at sea have watched the skilled, weath- 
er-worn sailor when he seems to look through the gale, and 
search deep into the home of the storm. He sees what they 
can not see; he knows what, except from his lips, they never 
will be able to learn. They stand silent, but they question him 
with their eyes. So men new to war gaze upon the veteran 
commander, when, with knitted brow and steady eyes, he meas- 
ures.the enemy’s power, and draws near to his final resolve. - 
Campbell, fastening his eyes on the two columns standing be- 
fore him, and on the heavier and more distant column on his 
left front, seemed not.to think lightly of the enemy’s strength; 
but in another instant (for his mind was made up, and his 
Highland blood took fire at the coming array of the tartans) 
his features put on that glow which, seen in men of his race— 
race known by the kindling gray eye, and the light, stubborn, 


fight in which the Highland brigade took part; but it wonld be a mistake to 
use it as a warrant for any thing like vaunting over a brave enemy; for after 
the retreat of the Vladimir from the Great Redoubt, and the shot which dis- 
abled Kvetzinski, the divisional general, a comparison of the mere numbers 
which took part in the succeeding fight could not justly be put forward as a 
means of showing the relative prowess of the combatants. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 593 


crisping hair—discloses the rapture of instant fight. Although 
at that moment the 42nd was alone, and was confronted by the 
two columns on the farther side of the hollow, yet Campbell, 
having a steadfast faith in Colonel Cameron and in the regi- 
ment he commanded, resolved to go straight on, and at once, 
with his forward movement. He allowed the battalion to de- 
scend alone into the hollow, marching straight against the two 
columns. Moreover, he suffered it te undertake a manceuvre 
which (except with troops of great steadiness and highly in- 
structed) can hardly be tried with safety against regiments still 
unshaken. The ‘ Black Watch’ ‘advanced firing. T 

But whilst this fight was going on between “the 42nd and 
the two Russian columns, grave danger from another quarter 
seemed to threaten the Highland battalion; for, before it had 
gone many paces, Campbell saw that the column which had 
appeared on his left front was boldly marching forward, and 
such was the direction it took, and such the nature of the 
ground, that the column, if it were suffered to go on with this 
movement, would be able to strike at the flank of the 42nd 
without having first to descend into lower ground. 

Halting the 42nd in the hollow, Campbell swiftly measured 
the strength of the approaching column, and he reckoned it so 
strong that he resolved to prepare for it a front of no less than 
five companies. He was upon the point of giving the order 
for effecting this bend in the line of the 42nd, when, looking to 
his left rear, he saw his centre battalion springing up to “the 
outer crest. But almost in the same moment he saw, or in 
some way divined, that this battalion, in its exceeding ardor 
for the fight, was coming up wild and raging. He instantly 
rode to his left. 

The 93rd, in the Crimea, was never quite like other regi- 
ments, for it chanced that it had receivedynto its ranks a large 
proportion of those men of eager spirit who had petitioned to 
be exchanged from regiments left at home to regiments en- 
gaged in the war. The exceeding fire and vehemence, and the 
ever-ready energies of the battalion, made it an instrument of 
great might, if only it could be duly held in, but gave it a 
tendency to be headlong in its desire to hurl itself upon the 
enemy. 

In a minute this fiery 93rd came storming over the crest, and, 
having now at last an enemy’s column before it, it seemed to 
be almost mad with warlike j joy. Its formation, of cour se, Was 

1 We saw that Colonel Hood, with the Grenadier Guards, ‘advanced firing,’ 


but at that moment he had already brought the column which he attacked 
to the verge of its ruin. 


*pabobua 
suapunyybuy oy, “ITY QURS.Inoy oy} Uo yYSY 
puooes OY} JO MOLZeNUT}UOD oY} SuLMoys ULI 


BQ suo 
BQ 20. UL 


Cnar. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 595 


disturbed by the haste and vehemence of the onset ; and Camp- 
bell saw that, unless the regiment could be halted and a little 
calmed down, 1t would go on rushing forward in disordered 
fury, at the risk of shattering itself against the strength of 
the hard, square-built column which was solemnly coming to 
meet it. 

But he who could halt his men on the bank of a cool stream 
when they were rushing down to quench the rage of their 
thirst, was able to quiet them in the midst of their warlike 
fury. Sir Colin got the regiment to halt and dress its ranks. 
By this time it was under the fire of the approaching column. 

Campbell’s charger, twice wounded already, but hitherto 
not much hurt, was now struck by a shot in the heart. . With- 
out a stumble or a plunge, the horse sank down gently to the 
earth and was dead. Campbell took his aid-de-camp’s charg- 
er; but he had not been long in Shadwell’s saddle, when up 
came Sir Colin’s groom with his second horse. The man, per- 
haps, under some former master, had been used to be charged 
with the ‘second horse’ in the hunting-field. At all events, 
here he was; and if Sir Colin was angered by the apparition, 
he could not deny that it was opportune. The man touched 
his cap, and excused himself for being where he was. In the 
dry, terse way of those Englishmen who are much accustomed 
to horses, he explained that, toward the rear, the balls had been 
dropping about very thick, and that, fearing some harm might 
come to his master’s second horse, he had thought it best to 
bring him up to the front. 

When the 93rd had recovered the perfectness of its array, 
it again moved forward, but at the steady pace imposed upon 
it by the chief. The 42nd had already resumed its forward 
movement. It still advanced firing. 

There are things in the world which, eluding the resources 
of the dry narrator, can still be faintly imaged by that subtle 
power which sometimes enables mankind to picture dim truth 
by fancy. According to the thought which floated in the mind 
of the churchman who taught to All the Russias their grand 
form of prayer for victory, there are ‘angels of light’ and ‘ an- 
‘gels of darkness and horror,’ who soar over the heads of sol- 
diery destined to be engaged in close fight, and attend them 
into battle.!. When the fight grows hot, the angels hover 


‘hear us this day praying for these troops that are gathered together. Bless 
‘and strengthen them, and give them a manly heart against their enemies. 
‘Send them an Angel of Light, and to the enemies an Angel of Darkness 
‘and Horror, to scatter them, and place a stumbling-block before them, te 
‘weaken their hearts and turn their courage into Aight,’ 


596 . INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. {[Cuap. XLIV. 


down near to earth with their bright limbs twined deep in the 
wreaths of the smoke which divides the combatants. But it 
is no coarse, bodily help that these Christian angels bring. 
More purely spiritual than the .old Immortals, they strike no 
blow, they snatch no man’s weapon, they lift away no warrior 
in a cloud. What the Angel of Light can bestow is valor, 
priceless valor, and light to lighten the path to victory, giving 
men grace to see the bare truth, and, seeing it, to have the mas- 
tery. To regiments which are to be blessed with victory the 
Angel of Light seems to beckon, and gently draw his men for- 
ward. What the Angel of Darkness can inflict is fear, horror, 
despair; and it is given him also to be able to plant error and 
vain fancies in the minds of the doomed soldiery. By false 
dread he scares them. Whether he who conceived this prayer 
was soldier or priest, or soldier and priest. in one, it seems to 
me that he knew more of the true nature of the strife of good 
infantry than he could utter in common prose. For, indeed, it 
is no physical power which rules the conflict between two well- 
formed bodies of foot. 

The mere killing and wounding which occurs whilst a fight 
is still hanging in doubt, does not so alter the relative numbers 
of the combatants as in that way to govern the result. The 
use of the slaughter which takes place at that time lies mainly 
in the stress which it puts upon the minds of those who, them- 
selves remaining unhurt, are nevertheless disturbed by the 
sight of what is befalling their comrades. In that way, a com- 
mand of the means of inflicting death and wounds is one ele- 
ment of victory. But it is far from being the chief one. Nor 
is it by perfectness of discipline, nor yet by a contempt of life, 
that men can assure to themselves the mastery over their foes. 
More or less, all these things are needed ; but the truly govern- 
ing power is that ascendency ‘of the stronger over the weaker 
heart which (because of the mystery of its origin) the church- 
man was willing to ascribe to angels coming down from on high. 

The turning moment of a fight is a moment of trial for the 
soul and not for the body; and it is, therefore, that such cour- 
age as men are able to gather from being gross in numbers 
can be easily outweighed by the warlike virtue of a few. To 
the stately ‘Black Watch’ and the hot 93rd, with Campbell 
leading them on, there was vouchsafed that stronger heart, for 
which the brave, pious Muscovites had prayed. Over the souls 
of the men in the columns there was spread, first the gloom, 
then the swarm of vain delusions, and at last.the sheer horror 
which might be the work of the Angel of Darkness.!’ The two 


1 See the next note. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 597 


lines marched straight on. The three columns shook. They 
were not yet subdued. They were stubborn; but every mo- 
ment the two advancing battalions grew nearer and nearer, 
and although—dimly masking the scant numbers of the High- 
landers—there was still the white curtain of smoke which al- 
ways rolled on before them, yet fitfully, and from moment to 

moment, the signs of them could be traced on the right hand 
and on the left in a long, shadowy line, and their coming was 
ceaseless. 

But, moreover, the Highlanders being men of great stature, 
and in strange carb, their plumes being tall, and the view of 
them being broken and distorted by the wreaths of the smoke, 
and there ‘being , too, an ominous silence in their ranks, there 
were men among the Russians who began to conceive a vague 
terror—the terror of things unearthly; and some, they say, 
imagined that they were char ged by horsemen strange, silent, 
monstrous, bestriding giant chargers.!. The columns were fall- 
ing into that plight—we have twice before seen it this day— 
were falling into that plight, that its officers were moving hither 
and thither with their drawn swords, were commanding, were 
imploring, were threatening, nay, were even laying hands on 
their soldiery, and striving to hold them fast in their. places. 
This struggle is the last stage but one in the agony of a body 
of good infantry massed in close column. Unless help should 
come from elsewhere, the three columns would have to give 
way. But help came. From the high ground on our left an- 
other heavy column—the column composed of the two right 
Sousdal battalions—was seen coming down. It moved str aight 
at the flank of the 93rd. 

So now for the third time that day a mass of infantry, some 
fifteen hundred strong, was descending upon the naked flank 
of a battalion in English ar ray 5 and, coming as it did from the 
extreme right of the enemy’s position, this last attack was 
aimed almost straight at the file—the file of only two men— 
which closed the line of the 93rd. 

But some witchcraft, the doomed men might fancy, was 
causing the earth to bear giants. Above the crest or swell of 
ground on the left rear of the 93rd, yet another array of the 
tall, bending plumes began to rise up in a long, ceaseless line, 
stretching far into the east, and presently, in all the grace and 
beauty that marks a Highland regiment when it springs up 
the side of a hill, the 79th came bounding forward. Without 


' Tt was from the poor wounded prisoners that our people gathered the 
accounts of the impression produced upon their minds by the advance of the 
Highlanders. 


598 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Cuar. XLIV; 


a halt, or with only the halt that was needed for dressing the 
ranks, it sprang at the flank of the right Sousdal column, and 
caught it in its sin—caught it daring to march across the front 
of a battalion advancing in line. Wrapped in the fire thus 
poured upon its flank, the hapless column could not march, 
Defeat of the COUld not live. It broke, and began to fall back in 
four Russian great confusion; and, the left Sousdal column being 
ee almost at the same time overthrown by the 93rd, 
and the two columns which had engaged the ‘ Black Watch’ 
being now in full retreat, the spurs of the hill and the winding 
dale beyond became thronged with the enemy’s disordered 
masses. | 

Then again, they say, there was heard the sorrowful wail 
that bursts from the heart of the brave Russian infantry when 
they have to suffer defeat; but this time the wail was the wail 
of eight battalions; and the warlike grief of the soldiery could 
no longer kindle the fierce intent which, only a little before, 
had spurred forward the Vladimir column. Hope had fled. 

After having been parted from one another by the nature 
of the ground, and thus thrown for some time into échelon, the 
battalions of Sir Colin’s brigades were now once more close 
abreast; and since the men looked upon ground where the 
gray remains of the enemy’s broken strength were mournfully 
rolling away, they could not but see that this, the revoir of the 
Highlanders, had chanced in a moment of glory. Knowing 
their hearts,.and deeming that: the time was one when the 
voice of his people might fitly enough be heard, the Chief 
touched or half lifted his hat in the way of a man assenting. 
Then along the Kourgané slopes, and thence west almost home 
to the Causeway, the hill-sides were made to resound with that 
joyous, assuring cry which is the natural utterance of the north- 
ern people so long as it is warlike and free.} 

Descending into the hollow where the vanquished troops 
flooded down, the waves of sound lit upon the throng and 
touched it, some imagined, as a breath of air touches a forest, 
lightly stirring its numberless leaves. And in truth it might 
be that, even in this the hour of turmoil and defeat, the long- 
suffering Muscovites were stirred with a new thought; for 
they never before that day had heard what our people call 
‘“‘ cheers,” and the sound is of such a kind that it startles men 
not born to freedom. : 


1 Many of our people who had heard the cheers of the Highlanders were 
hindered from seeing them by the bend of the ground, and they supposed 
that the cheers were uttered in charging. It was not so. The Highlanders’ 
advanced in silence. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 599 


The three Highland regiments were now re-formed, and Sir 
Colin Campbell, careful in the midst of victory, looked to see 
whether the supports were near enough to warrant him in 
pressing the enemy’s retreat with his Highland brigade. He 
judged that, since Cathcart was still a good way off, the High- 
landers ought to be established on the ground which they had 
already won; and, never forgetting that all this while he was 
on the extreme left of the whole infantry array of the Allies, 
he made a bend in his line, which caused it to show a front to- 
ward the southeast as well as toward the south. 

The great column of the four Ouglitz battalions was still on 
Stand madeby the rise of the hill beyond the hollow. It was a 
the Ouglitz “ force 3000 strong, was as yet untouched, and was 
battalions. : = 2 

glowing with the same fire and zeal as when it had 
come down in anger to support the attack upon Codrington’s 
brigade. From the high and commanding ground where the 
column stood posted, its officers had been able to see and un- 
derstand the numerical proportions of the combatants more 
clearly than any man could who was toiling in the smoke of the 
fight. Looking down from the slope, they had had to endure 
to see the gathered masses of their fellow-countrymen giving 
way to the slender lines of the red-coats; and, not bearing to 
think that their Czar and his famed infantry were to be co- 
erced by means so small and delicate, they became inflamed 
with a great indignation against their own people for being 
defeated; and presently the whole column came down the 
hill, undertaking nothing less than to stay the ebb of the tide. 
It thrust itself full against the retreating masses, and angrily 
strove to drive them back into the fight. 

But the Highland brigade now again opened fire, and the 
The enemy's enemy, being left very helpless, and having no guns 
neglect of oth- jn battery wherewith to attempt a stand, the Oug- 
er measures . . 
for covering litz column was forced to turn. It went part way 
the retreat. up to its old ground in order to be able to cover 
the retreat of the vanquished masses. | 

The enemy’s brave and devoted infantry, already abandoned 
by their ordnance, were now deserted in their great need by 
the Russian cavalry. Those horsemen, near 3000 strong, had 
been so palsied by orders or want of orders, or by some failure 
of spirit or capacity, that, although they were confronted by 
only a third of their number of horse, they had not only ab- 
stained from all challenge, but had twice borne to look upon 
the open flank ofa slender infantry line ascending to carry the 
heights, they themselves standing still all the while on the 
pleasant slopes of the hill; and now, when the faithful soldiery 


. by the Guards 


600 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — [Curar, XLIV. 


might well look for charges of horsemen to coyer the retreat, 
their cavalry still remained idle, though it lingered for a while 
on the field.! . 

Our cavalry, long impatient of the restraint imposed upon it 
by the commander of the forces, had crossed the river without 
Lord Raglan’s authority ; and although the nature of the ford 
and the upset of a gun-carriage had caused a good deal of de- 
lay, they reached the top of the hill soon after the Highlanders 
had crowned it. With Lord Lucan’s sanction, three guns of 
the horse artillery, under Captain Maude, were placed in bat- 
tery, and three guns of Captain Brandling’s troop, which came 
up at the time, were established on the right of the 42nd. The 
Slaughter of fire of these six guns told cruelly upon the enemy’s 
ete: by ee retreating masses; and the like being done by other 
tillery. English batteries on the west of the Kourgané Hill, 
the slaughter was so great that, of those who fel, very many 
fell upon their comrades, making in some places small banks 
of slain or wounded men; but where the round shot plowed 
into columns still keeping something. of their old coherence, 
there the men so fell that there were—but I care not to speak 
any more of the slaughter that is wrought by cannon when the 
infantry strife is all over. 

Of the four Russian Generals who took part in this fight of 
Losses sus. the Kourgane Hill, three were wounded, and nearly 
tained by the all the field-officers, together with very many officers 


enemy on the S 
Ronegata of humbler grade who were on duty with the ene- 
ut my’s infantry in this part of the field, were either 


killed or wounded. The brave Vladimir and the Kazan corps 
suffered dreadful losses. The loss of the four Kazan battalions 
alone was put at no less than seventeen hundred.? | 

This achievement by the Guards and the Highland brigade 
was so rapid, and was executed with so steadfast a 
and Highland- faith in the prowess of our soldiery and the ascend- 
Tt ency of Line over Column, that in vanquishing great 
masses of infantry, 12,000 strong,? and in going straight through 


’ At an early period of the action, symptoms of this backwardness of the 
Russian cavalry had been sagaciously detected by the practiced eye of Sir 
George Cathcart. Being on our extreme left, he had narrowly watched the 
enemy’s horsemen, and, even before the deployment of the Ist Division, he 
had found himself able to assure Lord Raglan that nothing serious was like- 
ly to be attempted by the enemy’s cavalry on the right bank of the river. 
This message was carried, I think, by Captain Elliot. It was of great value 
to Lord Raglan. 

* Chodasiewicz, p.76. The estimate was not official, and was made under 
the influence of the despondency created by the retreat. It seems probable, 
therefore, that it exaggerated the loss. 

* This figure is got at by first taking at their usual strength the 18 battal- 


nar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 601 


with an onset which tore open the Russian position, the six bat 
talions together did not lose 500 men.! 

Is it then with slight loss, is it thus in a swift march of a few 
hundred paces on a hill-side, and with all this seeming ease and 
grace, that the last of the work is done whereby nation gains 
the mastery over nation ? 

Well, the truth is that, before it comes to a struggle like this, 
a State waging war may have to bear cruel losses—losses at 
sea, losses by pestilence and famine; losses also inflicted by the 
enemy before he consents to give battle with his infantry upon 
open ground ; and it might happen to a nation to have to go 
through a campaign without coming once to the strife for 
which her people are fitted; but when at last, after many an 
obstacle vanquished, after many a tormenting delay, the En- 
glish array of two deep is suffered to reach open ground and 
there measure its strength with gross columns, then the annals 
of our country have taught us that, unless there be an almost 
overwhelming disparity of numbers, there ought to be no mis- 
giving about what will be the end of the fight.? 
ions which were on the Kourgané Hill, and then deducting 2500 (a very am- 
ple deduction) for losses which these troops sustained before the advance of 
the Guards. 

1 The exact number seems to be 438, and of this loss a large proportion 
was occasioned by the disaster which befell the Scots Fusileer Guards. Be- 
sides the casualties occurring to officers, which have been mentioned elsewhere, 
Cust of the Coldstream, and Abercrombie of the 93rd, were killed, and Baring 
of the Coldstream was wounded. 

2 The power which a nation may have of fighting in line depends, per- 
haps, mainly upon the constitutional temperament of its people, but in some 
degree, also, upon the question whether the high quality of its soldiery is 
fairly spread through the bulk of its army. No nation can expect to be able 
to fight in line if the prowess of its people is so abundantly gathered into the 
choice regiments as to leave the rest of the army in a condition of recognized 
inferiority. In Sir George Cathcart’s book there is an interesting. statement 
both of the causes which deprived the French of the power of fighting in line, 
and of the manner in which the predicament was met by the genius of Du- 
mouriez. The system which Dumouriez contrived as a makeshift was at- 
tended with success so brilliant, that it was not only acted upon by France 


"herself throughout the revolutionary war, but was adopted by all the Conti- 


nental Powers which came into conflict with her; and, until the English dis- 
played to them once more the line formation, Bonaparte and the other imi- 
tators of Dumouriez were encountered by nothing but their own system— 
their own system worked out with inferior ability, and with means to which 
the system was ill adapted. Dumouriez’s system is the one still used by 
France, and still rendered necessary by the manner in which the French 
army is constituted. A French general goes into action probably with a 
strong proportion of cavalry, but certainly with a very powerful artillery. He 
also has several Zouave, Chasseur, or other choice regiments, well fitted for 
skirmishing, and for close, bold fighting in villages, inclosures, and broken 
ground; but a great part of the rest of his army consists of masses—the. fruit 


Vou. I—C oc 


602 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV: 


XXXIV. 

On the western slopes of the Kourgané Hill, no step, that I 
know of, was taken for covering the withdrawal of the defeated 
troops; and if in the minds of Russian officers in that part of 
the field there yet remained any notion of trying to govern the 
retreat, their last hope was blasted by the new and ominous 
The scarlet © SQN Which then started full into view. On the fa- 
archon the tal knoll, whence evil seemed always to come to the 
neon army of the Czar, there took place a sudden change. 
The horsemen with the white plumes were withdrawn from 
sight, and in a minute the knoll was surmounted with a scarlet 
arch. The arch was an arch built of English troops ranged in 
line across the summit, and thence on either side stretching 
down the steep shoulders of the knoll. And this arch of 
formed troops rose up in the heart of what had been the Rus- 
sian position. Moreover, it faced toward the southeast, plainly 
showing that it was in the mind of the red-coats to cross the 
higher part of the Pass, and spring upon the flank of the troops 
which were retiring along the Great Causeway. 

Then, perhaps, if not long before, the most hopeful of the 
Russian officers who looked from the Pass or from the western 
slopes of the Kourgané Hill would be constrained to acknowl- 
edge that their army had fallen under the mastery of that gra- 
cious-looking horseman, long seen on the knoll, who managed 
his charger and his field-glass with one hand and a half empty 
sleeve. And, indeed, the mastery was now so complete that, 
to any poor Muscovite soldier who was simply moving from 
the field with all the speed he had, his officers could hardly say 
with truth that they knew any better strategy than his. 

It will be remembered that when Lord Raglan, after cross- 
ing the river, gained his first joyful glimpse of the knoll, he or- 
dered up Adams’s brigade in all haste. The force encounter- 
ed some trouble in passing the river; but it was keenly urged 
forward, and, the moment it gained the summit of the knoll, 
Lord Raglan, with his own eye and voice, caused it to be drawn 


of the conscription—masses which may be so displayed as to give an appear- 
ance of impending strength, but which he well knows must not be placed in 
any very trying situation. Thus provided and thus clogged, he tries to make 
such a use of his artillery and of his choice regiments as shall avert any ex- 
tended conflict between formed battalions. If he can do that (he did so in the 
Italian campaign of 1859, but at the horrible cost of sacrificing his choice 
regiments), he will have a very good chance of winning the battle. His diffi- 
culties, however, are likely to be increased by the progress of modern inven- 
tion, for the new artillery is making it hard for him to know where to place 
the less impetuous part of his army. 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 603 


up in line. In order to make way for it on the top, the Head- 
Quarter Staff moved aside, and Lord Raglan so placed the line 
that it fronted toward the southeast. 

If the battle at this time had been hanging in doubt, Lord 
Raglan, placed as he was with these two battalions in his hand, 
could hardly have failed to make them the means of governing 
the result; for their advance would have threatened to roll up 
the enemy’s line from its centre to its extreme right. As it 
was, the force became that scarlet bow on the knoll which 
seemed to present to the enemy the alternative of sheer flight 
or captivity. 

Lord Raglan, however, perceived that the cogency with 
which these battalions would act in hurrying the retreat de- 
pended rather upon their mere appearance in this part of the 
field than upon any real power that they had of intercepting 
the enemy; for, though the enemy might judge them to be 
very near, they were parted from him by deep hollows, and it 
was plain that if they were moved forward before the knowl- 
edge of their presence had sufficiently spread, they would in a 
great measure lose their weight, because, in crossing the hol- 
low which divided them from the line of the retreat, they 
would necessarily drop out of sight. So,in order that the as- 
pect of the force might sink into the enemy’s heart, Lord Rag- 
lan kept it formed upon the summit of the knoll for two or 
three minutes. He then moved it toward the southeast. 

Nearly at this time the column of the Ouglitz battalions be- 
Retreat of the 220 to fall back. Then there was no part of the 
last Russian Russian army in this part of the field which was 
battalions _ not in full retreat. 
hitherto stood The guns of Turner’s battery were limbered up 
their ground. ‘and pushed forward to a commanding spot farther 
up in the Pass, and thence, at long range, they continued to 
Final opera. POUr their fire upon the enemy’s retreating troops. 
tions of the ar- In the performance of this duty they were aided by 
PES a French battery. Afterward, Lord Raglan sent 
an aid-de-camp with orders to cause the guns to advance to a 
more commanding ground, which he had observed on their 
left front. The English battery advanced accordingly, but the 
officers in command of the French battery declined to move 
forward. It was at this time that Walsham was killed. He 
was the last officer who fell that day. Besides 
Walsham, our artillery corps lost two officers kill- 
ed, namely, Dew and Cockrell; and of the rank and file, nine 
were killed and twenty (besides one sergeant) were wounded. 


Their losses. 


604 INVASION OF THE GRIMEA. — [Cuar. XLIV, 


XXXV. 

Lord Raglan now descended the knoll whither Fortune, in 
Lord Raglan her wild and puissant government of human events, 
erossing the had happily chosen to lead him. Bending his steps 
Causeway: toward the ground just won by the Duke of Cam- 
bridge’s Division, he rode across the main causeway. 

At that very time, as I make it,! there was riding toward 
Prince Ments- Lord Raglan, and riding, too, along the same road, 
cuiko# ri’™s though at a distance of some few hundred yards, a 
him, man confounded and troubled, who had helped to 
bring. great woe on his country. . 

Clearly wanting in many, nay, perhaps in most, of the qual- 
ities which make an able commander, Prince Mentschikoff was 
still a brave man. It could not but be that his heart was in 
the cause. A momentous battle had been raging. Of one of, 
the contending armies he was the Commander-in-Chief. . He 
was in full health. He yearned to be acting. Yet, from the 
moment when he intrusted to Kiriakoff the great column. of, 
the eight battalions, his mind had given no impress to events. 

In order to see how this came to be possible, it must be re- 
The part which membered, first, that the tract of ground over which 
tnitue inthe Prince Mentschikoff watched was somewhat broad, 
battle. and, secondly, that all the decisive fighting of that 
day was condensed into a narrow period of time. . The Allies 
had been advancing upon a front of five miles; and all the 
fights in which the combatants had engaged with their ranged 
battalions took place, as I reckon it, within a period of some 
thirty-five minutes. Now, if any man used to the saddle, and 
acquainted, also, with a country of open downs much divided 
by hollows and ravines, will fasten his mind upon any two hill- 
tops or other landmarks which he knows to be five miles asun- 
der, and will then imagine a number of brief events to be hap- 
pening, first in one part of this extended tract and then in an- 
other, but all within little more than half an hour, he will be 
able to understand how it might be possible for the Russian 
General to be eagerly riding from east to west and from west 
to east, yet always being so luckless as never once to strike in 
upon the ground where the event which he yearned to witness 
and to control was swiftly passing. It was not, I am sure, 


1 The General who describes his meeting with Prince. Mentschikoff shows 
the stage to which the battle had reached at the time when the meeting took 
place; and it seems to me that that was just the stage in which the battle 
was when Lord Raglan crossed the great road. _ This is my only ground for 
supposing that the two incidents occurred simultaneously. 


Cnar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. | 605 


. from any neglect or delinquency that Prince ‘Mentschikoff 
came to be annulled during all the heavy stress of the battle. 
We left the Prince handing over to Kiriakoff the charge 
of the great column of the eight battalions, and it is only by 
conjecture that | can form an idea of what became of him 
during the critical period of several minutes which then im- 
mediately followed. He would not have abandoned the per- 
sonal command of the column which he had eagerly gathered 
together for a great enterprise, unless he had been dragged 
away by tidings of what was happening in the English part of 
the field. Thither, therefore, he would ride, and he would ride, 
no doubt, with the knowledge (for that was what his last tid- 
ings must have taught him) that the English had stormed and 
earried the Great Redoubt. But he would have to cross the 
great road, and before he got thither he would see, and would 
see, one may imagine, with unspeakable astonishment, that the — 
columns which formed his “ great reserves” were no longer in 
their place. Finding that they were retiring or had already 
retired, and knowing nothing of the way in which Lord Rag- 
Jan had driven them from the field -by the use of his two guns 
on the knoll, the Prince would be likely to ride in the direc- 
tion which the reserve columns took, very eager to find some 
man upon whom to vent his anger. The minutes it took him 
to ride after the reserves to seek out the cause of their retreat, 
and to come back to the front, would be those very minutes 
in which the position held by the centre and the right of the 
Russian army was falling into the hands of the English. 

This, I repeat, is only a conjectural mode of filling the chasm 
Prince Ments. Which is left open by the Russian narrators; but 
chikoff'sreap- the spot where the Prince is found when he reap- 
pearance in the . : : 0 
English part of pears to the eye of History is exactly the one in 
Hye eld, which those who adopt my surmise would expect 
to see him riding; for it was by the great road, where 
his reserves had been posted, that Prince Mentschikoff came 
back into that part of the field with which the English had 
dealt. When last he saw it, the position, immensely strong 
by nature, was held in the gripe of powerful batteries and 
battalions standing rigid as granite. Since that time, it is 
true, some hours had passed, but it was only a few minutes 
before that he had been the assailant in the other part of the 
field, placing a mighty column in the hands of Kiriakoff with 
orders to make an onslaught upon Canrobert’s Division. Now 
—he gazed and gazed again, being slow to understand—being 
slow to let in the belief that the gray, rolling masses which 
approached him were the ruins of two thirds of his army. But 


606 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


presently he came upon a sight hardly less strange, hardly less . 
shocking to him than his retreating soldiery. He met on the 
road a lone man—a lone man on foot, walking away from the 
field. He looked, and came to make out that this lone pedes- 
His meeting tian was Prince Gortschakoff— Prince Gortscha- 
with Gortscha- koff, the chief to whom he had intrusted the com- 
aot mand of the whole centre and the whole right wing 
of his army. ‘What is this?” ‘What is the matter?’ ‘Why 
‘are you on foot?? ‘Why are you alone?’ These, as was 
natural, were the questions hurled at Prince Gortschakoff by 
his troubled, amazed commander. ‘ My horse,’ said Gortscha- 
koff, ‘was killed near the river. I am alone, because all the 
‘aids-de-camp and oflicers of my Staff have been killed or 
‘wounded: I have received six shots; and then, in a spirit 
- scarce worthy of historic moments, scarce matching with the 
greatness of the disaster which his overthrow had brought 
upon a proud and mighty empire, Prince Gortschakoff showed 
the rents which shot had made in his clothes.! 

At this time, so far as I know, Prince Mentschikoff used 
He does not at None of the means by which, though forced to re- 
a te eae skilled commanders can make themselves 
forcovering feared. On the very road where he stood, the 
the retreat. ~~ Qzar’s faithful infantry —infantry famous for its he- 
roism in the trying hour of a retreat—was left to extricate it- 
self from the field by brute flight. It would seem that Prince 
Mentschikoff’s authority — already for some time neutralized 
by the mischanees which, all the day long, had been throwing 
him into the wrong part of the field—now slipped from out of 
his hands. He had no longer a grasp of his army. A little 
Heiscarried later he was seen borne along with the ebb, a dis- 
ang with the mal unit in the throng. Endued with a high spirit, 
masses. and having a good deal of the pride which a man 
may justly take in his country so long as it is warlike and hon- 
est, he broke out into a loud, angry cry, ‘It is a disgrace,’ he 
said, ‘for a Russian soldier to retreat!’ An officer, hearing 
his words, and being maddened, partly by the defeat, and part- 
ly, as they say, by strong drink—fiercely answered his general, 
and told him to his face, in the hearing of the soldiery, that if 
he had ordered the men to stand they would have held their 
ground.? To this depth of wretchedness Prince Mentschikofft 
fell in the nineteenth month from the time when, in the name 
of a mighty empire, and under the gaze of all Europe, he came 


* It is Prince Gortschakoff himself who gives this account of his meeting 
with Prince Mentschikoff. ? Chodasiewicz. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 607 


down into the Bosphorus with commission to trample upon 
the Ottoman State. 


XXXVI. 

Meantime Evans, still on our right front, had been rejoined 
The array of Dy the two regiments detached under Adams. The 
the English Scots Fusileers had resumed their place in the cen- 
Berek thes tre of the brigade of Guards. The Light Division, 
had won. re-formed, had followed the advance of the Duke 
of Cambridge. Sir Richard England, pushing forward toward 
his right front, had taken up ground on one of the eastern 
spurs of the Telegraph Height. At the opposite extremity of 
our line Cathcart had established himself on the left rear of 
the Highland brigade. Facing almost due south, pushed for- 
ward to the reverse of the slopes which made the strength of 
the Russian position, and ranged upon a front of two miles, 
the British infantry looked down upon the enemy’s retreat- 
ing masses. | 

At this time Lord Raglan sent the Adjutant-General with 
Operations of His orders to the cavalry. Those orders, however, 
the English did not authorize the operations by which it is 
Say usual for horsenien to gather in the fruits of a vic- 
tory. A commander, even in battle, must not forget the cam- 
paign. The Western Powers were invading a province of 
Russia, with forces which had to march through an open coun- 
try. Their pretension to wage such war as that depended 
upon their having at their command all the three arms of the 
service. Therefore the strength of the arm in which they 
were the most weak was the measure of their power as invad- 
ers. The French, as we saw, had no cavalry, and the English 
had rather more than a thousand sabres and lances. With 
such a force thrown forward to intercept the enemy’s retreat- 
ing masses, many prisoners, together perhaps with some guns, 
might have been taken; and it was to be expected that blows 
of this kind would aggravate the despondency of the beaten 
army. But Lord Raglan judged that no practicable capture 
of trophies or prisoners was worth the risk of losing a materi- 
al part of his small, brilliant cavalry force. He therefore de- 
clined to let his horsemen push forward without the support 
of a powerful artillery; and the orders he sent by the Adju- 
tant-General directed that the cavalry should escort the foot 
batteries to the front. In delivering this instruction, Estcourt 
cautioned Lord Lucan, and told him ‘that the cavalry were 
‘not to attack.’ 

Lord Cardigan, with one half of the cavalry force, was di- 


608 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


rected to escort the guns which were to go to the right, whilst 
Lord Lucan in person went forward with the rest of the cay- 
alry, and escorted the guns advancing on our left. Lord Lu- 
can, riding in advance of the guns with a squadron of the 17th 
Lancers, came upon many of the enemy’s stragglers in retreat, 
and he ordered the horsemen who were with him, supported 
by another squadron, to pursue and take prisoners. A troop 
of the 11th Hussars had been ordered (it was said by Lord 
Raglan himself) to do the same thing, and the 17th had al- 
ready taken a great many prisoners, when the operation was 
stopped by special orders from Lord Raglan. What Lord 
Raglan had meant was, that the troopers employed in taking 
prisoners should be spread out as skirmishers; and when he 
saw that they were acting in serried ranks, and were going on 
far in advance, he became anxious lest some of the enemy’s 
guns should be brought to bear upon them, and occasion him 
a loss in that one description of force with which the Allies 
were scantily provided. He therefore sent, first one and then 
another Staff officer to the commander of the cavalry, with or- 
ders to give up the pursuit of prisoners, and: return to the 
duty of escorting the guns. Dhereupon Lord Lucan recalled 
the troopers in advance, and the prisoners they had taken were 
set free. 


XXXVII. 

‘It will be remembered that at the time when the head of 
Provress ofa he French Division was pushed back by the ‘ great 
gress of a a 5 See 
French artil- ‘column of the eight battalions,’ Canrobert was still 
ace ae pa- Without his artillery. But these batteries, having 
teu from east been sent down to Almatamack,.and haying there 

; crossed the river, had at last been brought: up to 
the plateau, and (along with some guns belonging to Bosquet’s 
Division) they were now traveling eastward. In the part of 
the field where Bosquet stood, and from which this long train 
of artillery had commenced its eastward journey, there was no 
enemy at hand, and even when the guns had come to within a 
short distance of the ground in front of Canrobert’s right wing, 
there was no Russian battalion which could be seen by the 
French artillerymen; for the train was moving along a hollow 
which, so long as a man rode low down, was deep enough to 
hinder him from seeing far either on his right hand or on his 
left. But some of the officers who were with the guns now 
Officers riding thought it was time to obtain a wider view of the 
Jee "ground, and they therefore rode part way up the 


descry the : 4 ores 
‘column ofthe slope which overhung the ravine toward their right. 


Cuar.XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 609 


‘eight battal- Before they had yet got quite up to the flat ground 
1ons. 

above the ravine, they suddenly stopped; for—mon- 
strous, immense, and obtruded before them on the plateau, at 
a distance of only a few hundred yards, they saw a gray, ob- 
long- to be a 
mass of Russian imfantr y—a mass of unwonted size—standing 
rigidly built in close column. This was the great ‘column of 
‘the eight battalions’-—the dumb, gliding phantasm of the Tel- 
egraph Height, whose bare aspect had given strange speed to 
the breathless French aid-de- -camp on the knoll, and had just 
been constraining the head of Canrobert’s Division to fall back 
and drop under the crest. With that warlike swiftness of 
thought which is natural to the French in the hour of battle, 
the officers who caught sight of this apparition darted straight 
upon the perception of what ought to be done. Some of the 
guns were brought up to a part of the slope from which— 
without being easily seen—they could throw their fire into the 
column.} 

Suddenly Kiriakoff found that his close mass of eight bat- 
The column is tAlions was cruelly rent by shot and shell coming 
og ies from the west. Without stopping to find out by 
Shae calm scrutiny the quarter whence the fire really 
came, Kiriakoff hastily accepted the belief that it came from 
the sea; and, in order to place his troops out of the reach of 
Kiriakoff the ships, he began to move off his column in an in- 
proves As land, or easterly direction, taking nearly the same 
route as that by which he had advanced.2 Whilst he thus 


1 See the plan. It is taken from a sketch which was made for me by a 
French officer who was present with the artillery thus brought to bear on ‘the 
column. 

? At one time the French stated (see Ducasse, ‘ Precis Historique’) that the 
retreat of this great column was the result of a fight with their infantry, but 
no such representation is now persisted in, for the French official statement 
(agreeing in that respect with Kiriakoff) says fairly that what forced the 
column to retreat was, not any sort of combat with the French inafntry, but 
the fire of the batteries mentioned in the text. After describing the advance 
of the great Russian column, the official French statement says :—* Deja 
‘cette colonne était parvenue & 150 metres de la droite du 7° de ligne, et la 
‘situation devenait trés critique lorsque les deux batteries de la division Can- 
‘robert (qui avaient été forcées daller passer au gué d’Almatamak), et les 
‘deux batteries de la division Bosquet arrivent au galop’sur le champ de 
‘bataille, ouvrent un feu terrible contre la colonne Russe, lui font éprouver 
‘des pertes considerables et la forcent a la retraite.’— Atlas Historique et Topo- 
graphique dela Guerre d’ Orient. The only words in this official statement 
which might produce a wrong impression are those which describe the guns 
as coming up at a gallop. When the train was traveling along the hollow, 
it no doubt moved as fast as it properly could; but when the guns were 
brought-part..way up the slope, and unlimbered and placed in. battery, the 


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Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 611 


marched, shot and shells continued to cut their way into the 
midst of his hapless column, inflicting a dreadful slaughter. 
This trial—the trial of men who have to march under a shat- 
tering fire without being able to strike one blow at their slay- 
ers—was borne by the Russian soldiery with a great fortitude. 
Order was maintained; and, torn as it was from 
moment to moment, the column marched grandly. 
Along with the column there were two batteries; but, far from 
helping to cover its retreat, these guns were suffered to become 
a burden; for, several of the horses having been wounded or 
killed, the task of dragging off the cannon was thrown upon 
soldiers: It would seem, however, that the natural awe with 
which Canrobert’s troops had looked upon the advance of the 
huge column was not lifted off from their minds when first they 
saw it withdrawing; for no French infantry moved forward to 
press the retreat of the eight battalions. ‘The French,’ says 
Itis not fo. iviakoff, ‘did not follow us. Iam ignorant of the 
lowed by the ‘reason why. Maybe they did not want to stand 
halted Sa tne. ‘between the fire of their ships and our regiments. 
right rear of ‘Maybe the sight of the two bodies of Hussars, 
the FeeeraPh- <hoaded by Colonel Wailinovich, may have checked 
eaded by Colonel Wailinovich, may hav 
‘them.! In fact, I can not explain their conduct.’ By pursu- 
ing his easterly march for some time, Kiriakoff brought his col- 
umn out of the artillery fire which had been tearing it, and he 
came at last to halt upon a spot on the right rear of the Tele- 
oe ehh gr: aph. Although it was the destiny of this ‘col- 
fea” Sumn of the eight battalions’ to be able to put a 
the battle. = great stress upon the French army, and afterward 
to be cruelly shattered by cannon, yet from first to last the 


Tts demeanor. 


operation was performed so skillfully and, so to speak, so stealthily, that Kiria- 
koff never made out the quarter whence destruction came, and imagined that 
his column was rent by the gunnery of the ships. My knowledge of the ex- 
act way in which these guns were brought to bear upon the hapless column 
is derived from a French officer who was present with the guns, and who 
took part in seizing the occasion which was presented by the sudden discov- 
ery of the column. When an account of an infantry fight with ‘the column 
‘of the eight battalions’ had once gone out to the world, it may seem strange 
that the story should be afterward repudiated by any French personages writ- 
ing or drawing officially ; but, besides that there is really a strong, honest 
leaning toward truth in the ‘ Atlas Historique,’ it is obvious that the French 
artillery officers, whose skill and quickness had shattered the great column 
and driven it from thé field, might justly and most cogently call upon the 
authorities to withdraw the falsehood which gave to French infantry the 
credit justly due to French gunners. 

' The translation I have says ‘ annoyed them,’ but I gather from the con- 
text that the word I have ventured to substitute more accurately Ag gine 
the General’s meaning. 


612 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


body which thus did and thus suffered was without an occa- 
sion for firing a shot. 


XXXVIII. . 

Moved from west to. east along the top of the plateau, the 

A flanking fire French guns which had dealt withthe column were 
from the ¥. now once more in battery, and upon ground from 
lery is poured which they threw a flanking fire in the direction of 
teens on Tete. the troops which still remained on the slopes in front 
graph Height. of the Telegraph Height. The only infantry forces 
which had been placed in that part of the field were the four 
Taroutine, and the four ‘ Militia’ battalions; but, supposing 
that the breaking-up of the ‘ Militia’ battalions was by this time » 
virtually complete, Kiriakoff had no infantry on the whole Tele- 
graph Height except the four Taroutine battalions, and the 
stricken, the bleeding column which he had just withdrawn 
Condition of from the front. Yet at this time, though Kiriakoff 
Goris evidently did not know of the proximity of many 
field. of the French battalions which were hanging back 
close under the plateau, there were in reality some thirty thou- 
sand Frenchmen and Turks standing on ground from which, in 
a period of only a few minutes, they might close in both upon 
his front and his left flank. Without apprehending the extent 
to which he was encompassed, Kiriakoff came to see that the 
troops he had in front of the Telegraph must not be left stand- 
ing under a cross-fire of artillery. He had notin his-own 
hands the means of repelling or silencing the guns which were 
pouring their fire from the west along the summit of the pla- 
The result of te2U; and, being without orders, and even, it seems, 
what Kiriakoff without tidings, he tried to find a clew for the guid- 
pn pitherto | ance of his conduct by learning the course which 
English part the battle was taking in the English part of the 
’ field. Hitherto his glances in that direction had 
brought him no comfort. Even so early as the time when he 
pushed back the head of Canrobert’s Division, he had found 
that the English were gaining the ascendency over the centre 
and right wing of the Russians. ‘ When,’ he writes— when 
‘the first success of the enemy had been stopped on the left 
‘wing, in the centre! and the right wing! the turn of affairs 
‘was beginning to be against us. I can not judge the particu- 
‘lars of that part of the battle, being fully occupied by doing 
‘my own duty, and I could not observe as well the events on 
‘my right; but thus far I could see that the enemy had taken 
1 i.e., those portions of the Russian army which were opposed to the En- - 
glish. 


Cap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 613 


‘up a strong position on the left bank of the Alma.’ This, at 
the moment of his success against Canrobert, had been Kiria- 
koff’s perception of the course which events were taking in the 
English part of the field; and now, when he looked once more 
He now eees 0 Where the red-coats were moving, he saw that in 
that inthat that part of the field the battle was lost to the Czar. 
paren the. He saw, not only that the Causeway batteries had 
" glish have won been withdrawn, and that upon their site English 
the battle. 

regiments were established (apparently he had seen 
that before’), ‘but that Mentschikoft’s infantry reserves were in 
retreat ; and that, looking eastward along the Russian side of 
the river as far as his eye could reach, he was unable to see the 
end of the slender red line which marked the advance of the 
English supports. Even if he did not observe or understand 
the ominous silence of the Great Redoubt, he could not fail to 
see that the withdrawal of the Causeway ‘batteries and of the 
infantry reserves was not only an abandonment of the great 
‘position on the Alma,’ but was also a retreat with which it 
was his obvious duty to conform. For that reason, he first or- 
dered his troops to retire to a part of the Great Post-road 
Heconformeto Which lay on the right rear of his position; and 
the movement when he got to that spot, he found that the victory 
Pann a won by Lord Raglan was by that time so well as- 
fore the En- sured as to oblige him to continue his retrograde 
glish. = K 

march, and conform at once to the movements of 
the seven-and-twenty battalions then yielding to their English 
assailants. 

‘Impossible’-—writes Kiriakoff, after speaking of the direc- 
tion in which French artillery had been brought to bear upon 
his troops in front of the Telegraph— impossible to leave the 
‘left wing thus exposed to a cross-fire, and I could not send or 
‘wait for orders from the Commander-in-Chief. The right 
‘ wing? having already begun a very decisive movement of 
‘retreat, 1 commanded the march toward the main road, on 
‘either side of which I ranged the troops. This road was be- 
‘yond the height where our principal reserves had stood. Then _ 
‘I became aware that our right wing? was indeed retreating ; 
‘and, wishing to conform as much as possible with their move- 
‘ments, I ordered a second march toward a height beyond the 
‘road. . . . The enemy did not follow us.” 


' When he said that the English ‘had taken up a strong position on the 
ae lt. é., the Russian] ‘ bank of the river.’ 
tr oops opposed to the English. 
7 It fall faith be given to this testimony of Kiriakoff, it is of course conclu- 


4 See next page. 


614 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


In their retreat the Taroutine battalions—the troops which 


His retreat is marched in what was then the rear of Kiriakoff’s 
by French ine force—were plied with the fire of cannon, but were 


fantry. not at all vexed by French infantry. 


| AKL 
When Kiriakoff’s battalions had withdrawn, Canrobert’s 


Great conflux Division and D’ Aurelle’s Brigade—that brigade fol- ° 
troops towara LOWed close by Prince Napoleon—moved straight 


the ‘Telegraph. upon. the Telegraph. This took place at the mo- 
ment when, in the English part of the field, our Grenadier 
Guards were stepping up from the river’s bank to engage the 
enemy’s columns.” The two Zouave Regiments, which stood 
side by side on the left front of Canrobert’s force, and, almost 
at the same moment, the 39th Regiment of the Line—the reg- 
iment which formed the head of D’Aurelle’s column—pushed 


sive of the question as to where the Russian retreat began, for he speaks as 
an eye-witness of the retreat which had taken place in front of the English, 
and he was the actual ordainer of the retrograde movement which he deemed 
to be the necessary consequence of the defeat which his countrymen had sus-’ 
tained at the hands of the English. It may be said that it was for his inter- 
est to make this statement, and that therefore he is not an impartial witness. 
This is true; but, besides that his character for honor and high spirit places 
him above the suspicion of gross and intentional misstatement, it happens 
that his account is corroborated in the most distinct terms by Anitchkoff, an 
apparently impartial narrator. Anitchkoff, when he wrote, was an officer on 
the General Staff of the Russian army, writing under circumstances which 
gave him considerable means of knowing the truth, and which made it his 
duty to hold the balance evenly between Gortschakoff, Kiriakoff, and Kvet- 
zinski. Yet in clear words he corroborates Kiriakoff. After speaking of 
the centre and right wing of the Russians, the troops with which the En- 
glish had been dealing—and of their retreat ‘ to the former position two versts 
‘to the south,’ he adds immediately these words: ‘ Whither they were’ [re- 
mark the word presently coming] ‘whither they were followed by the left 
‘wing, who had withstood and repelled the attack of the whole of the four 
‘French Divisions until the moment of the general retreat.’ 

* Kiriakoff does not himself say that he made any of the arrangements 
commonly resorted to by a general who has to withdraw his troops from the 
enemy’s presence; but the French authorities say for him that he covered 
his retreat with a powerful artillery. The whole tenor of Kiriakoff’s me- 
morial leads to the impression that, at the time of his retreating from the 
Telegraph Height, there was no Freuch infantry near enough to induce him 
to take the usual means for covering his retreat. It is probable, however, 
that, without any express orders from their divisional general, officers com- 
manding Russian batteries may have found and seized opportunities of using 
their guns. . 

' Chodasiewicz. This writer was a field-officer in the Taroutine corps, 
and his statements (almost all of them valuable) are an excellent authority 
in all that relates to the operations of his own regiment. 

See, in the Appendix, the grounds on which T rest this statement. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 615 


swiftly forward toward the Telegraph; and some of the more 
active men of these soldiery, running on in advance of their 
comrades, successively planted the colors of their three Regi- 
ments on the stump of the unfinished pillar, or on the scaffold- 
ing which the builders had placed there. It is said that while 
he was in the very act of thus uplifting the colors of his regi- 
ment, Lieutenant Poitevin, of the 39th, was struck by a shot 
and killed. 

When soldiers in battle break loose from the guidance of 
their commanders, they so feel the need of a purpose that a 
tree, a house, or a windmill—any object, in short, which stands 
out plain in the landscape, may have power to draw men 
toward it; and when a conflux like this has once set in, the 
eddy soon begins to run strong. First three or four eager and 
venturous men, then clusters, then scores, then hundreds, then 
thousands of panting soldiers were thronging from several 
Turmoil and quarters upon a single point. There could not but 
Tle be a great turmoil. Joy, warlike ardor, the in- 
graph. stinctive longing of the young soldier in his first 
battle to keep on discharging his musket, and perhaps (with 
some) the sight of the body of Lieutenant Poitevin—all these 
were causes much more than enough to account for abun- 
dance of firing on the part of the French troops; and when 
the mound of smoke thus generated was once piled up, the 
soldiers would be likely to continue firing into it for some time. 
Besides, the French artillery at this period was playing upon 
the enemy’s retreating battalions, and, on the other hand, it 
may be believed that the Russians were covering their retreat 
by a more or less diligent use of their ordnance. It is probable 
that this fire of the Russian artillery took effect. at a time 
when the heads of the French columns had already thronged 
up to the Telegraph, for it is certain that several of the Zou- 
aves were there struck down; and although it is made plain 
that no Russian infantry were intentionally placed at the Tele- 
graph with orders to make a stand, there is no difficulty in 
supposing that a knot of Russian soldiers may have been lin- 
gering about near the scaffolding of the turret, and may have 
remained long enough to have an opportunity of firing into the 
heads of the great columns which were converging upon the 
spot, and provoking a fire in'return. In that way, though the 
Russian accounts show no trace of it, there was, perhaps, a 
farewell interchange of shots. . 

Be this as it may, it is certain that (from the causes already. 
shown) there was much of the appearance of a real fight at the 
Telegraph, and, until the Russian narratives bronght other 


616 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


light to bear, it was believed that the French and the Russian 
infantry had met in fierce strife at this spot. On the other 
hand, the enemy’s accounts represent that Kiriakoff’s troops 
withdrew quietly from the Telegraph Height, without being 
even annoyed by French infantry, and without making or try- 
ing to make a defensive stand either at the pillar of the Tel- 
eor raph, or on any ground near it; and unless all the Russian 
narrators , though speaking with very different and even oppo- 
site feelings, have united to join in an unaccountable! perver- 
sion of the tr uth, it must now be held certain that the impetu- 
ous Zouaves, no less than their despised and peaceful comrades 
of the line, were precluded by sheer want of opponents from 
the means of engaging in that dreadful scene of hand-to-hand 
fighting and slaughter which, under the. description of ‘the 
‘combat at the Telegraph,’ has found a place in French annals.? 

At length the state of the smoke allowed men to see that 
there were no Russians near. Then the close of what resem- 
bled a fight was joyfully hailed as a victory. 

From the time when the bulk of the French advanced to the 
Marshal st, banks of the river, Marshal St. Arnaud had placed 
Aragud, himself in the midst of Prince Napoleon’s battalions; 
and, the Prince’s Division having been kept low down in the 
bottom during the critical period of the battle, it must have 
been hard for a man who remained jammed down with those 
troops to get a fair view of what was going on;? but the Mar- 
shal, it seems, now galloped up to the Telegraph, and sharing, 
no doubt, in the belief that there had been a hot fight there, 
and inferring also that the fight had been won by the thousands 
of eager Zouaves whom he saw thronging round the pillar, he 
turned, it is said, to these his most trusted soldiery, and said 
to them, ‘I thank you, my Zouaves!’ 

Canrobert’s and Prince N apoleon’s Divisions, with D’Au- 
relle’s brigade betwixt them, were then massed about the Tel- 
egraph upon a very small space of ground. 


‘I say ‘unaccountable’ because, if the French story were true, the stand 
which must have been made at the Telegraph by Kiriakoff’s infantry would 
have been an achievement so heroic, that, far from disowning, or concealing, 
ae forgetting it, every good Russian would have made it his pride and his 

oast. 

? 'The narratives which French historians have given of this supposed fight, 
together with my reasons for excluding their stories from my text, will be 
found in the Appendix. 

* See the plan (taken from the ‘ Atlas Historique’), which shows the Mar- 
shal’s position. 


Cuap: XLIV. | INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 617 


XL. 

At this time two messengers came in haste from different 
Opportunity of Parts of the English field of battle. ‘They both came 
cutting off —§ with the same object. The first of these was an 
ea uee! aid-de-camp sent straight from Lord Raglan to the 
ing masses. _ nearest French troops he could find. The other 
was Colonel Steele, who came charged with the request which 
General Airey, from another part of the field, had taken upon 
himself to address to Marshal St. Arnaud. Whilst the Russian 
Vain endeav- battalions were retreating before the English infan- 
Pbidtions of try, Lord Raglan in one part of the field, and Airey 
Airey to cause 1n another, had, almost at the same moment, observ- 


hdvaniase’ ed the same opportunity, and fastened upon the 
French troops. same mode of seizing it. Hach of them had seen 
that masses of the retreating infantry were moving in such 
-a direction and through a gorge which so straitened their 
movements, that their retreat could be cut off or turned into a 
ruinous disaster by the immediate advance of a few battalions 
pushing forward from the left of the French line, and bearing 
toward the great road. 

When Lord Raglan’s aid-de-camp reached the Telegraph, he 
found that the troops he came upon had just halted, two hun- 
dred yards in front of the building, and that the column with 
which he sought to find the Prince was under a good deal of 
excitement. Used to the silence of English troops, the aid-de- 
camp was a good deal struck with the effect produced by thou- 
sands of soldiers in heavy masses talking all at the same time. 
The aid-de-camp was accompanied by Vico, the French com- 
missioner accredited to the English head-quarters.. Vico con- 
veyed Lord Raglan’s wishes to the general commanding the 
_ brigade, and was told in answer that the troops would advance. 
This, however, they did not do. . 

The similar request which Colonel Steele addressed to St. 
Arnaud was met by a refusal. The Marshal excused himself 
for declining to advance by saying that his troops had left their 
knapsacks in the valley below. 

Marshal St. Arnaud was able to remain all day on horseback; 
St. Arnaua, 2nd it does not appear that the state of his health 
The extent to at this time was such as to hinder him from using 
Was brousttts his intellectual powers; but he did not place him- 
eas selfin a part of the field from which a general could 

attle. 

hope to be able to govern events. And from the 
time when he dispatched his ill-devised orders to the 4th Divi- 
sion, | have not been able to perceive that his mind at all 
touched the battle. 


618 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 


XLI. 

General Forey, perhaps, had hoped that in the presence of 
Situation of | the enemy he might be able to cover over the mark 
Porey with ,. which his reputation contracted on the 2nd of De- 
gade. cember, on the day when, along with Maupas’s com- 
missaries of police, he suffered himself to be publicly used as 
the assailant and the jailer of the unarmed Legislature of 
France; but if by chance this man shall be brought some day 
to his account, it will not be by an appeal to the memory of 
the Alma that he will be able to avert his punishment. With 
Lourmel’s brigade,! as we saw, he had followed the steps of 
Bouat, marching off to the peaceful sea-shore, and becoming 
null in the battle. When D’Aurelle was already-at the Tele- 
graph, Forey, with Lourmel’s brigade, had but just crossed the 
river at its very mouth, and was more than two miles distant 
from the nearest of the enemy’s forces. But with the excep- 
tion of this annulled brigade under Forey, and the two Turkish 
battalions which had been left to guard the baggage, the whole 
The rest of the Of the French and Ottoman troops were now ranged 
Mavedurey upon the plateau of the Telegraph Height. Their 
the plateau. array was upon ground less advanced than that ta- 
ken up by the English. It fronted toward the east. 


XLII. 

When Kiriakoff’s movement of retreat had brought him to 
The position the ridge which lay at a distance of nearly two 
taken up by miles in rear of the Telegraph, he forthwith took 
i a up a position, and once more showed a front to the 
Allies. Having with him not only his own artillery, but that 
also which Prince Mentschikoff had brought from the centre 
at the commencement of the action, and bemg in company at 
this time with some: of the cavalry, he was able to complete 
the semblance of something like a defensive stand by placing 
thirty guns in battery, and covering his left front with several 
The effect pro. Squadrons of hussars. By this wise and soldierly 
duced upon ~~ attitude Kiriakoff masked the confusion into which 
the Allies by 
his soldierly * the rest of the Ozar’s army had been thrown, and 
eg ‘caused the Allied commanders to believe that they 
had still a formidable enemy in their front. 


' This Lourmel was one of those who acted against Paris in the massacres 
of the 4th of December, and although he was only a colonel at that time, it 
is still proper to keep the December badge upon him, becanse it was the 
known character of the colonels commanding regiments which had eaused the 
President to bring them and their regiments to Paris with a view to use them. 


Guar. XLIV-] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 619 


Not only did Kiriakoff thus face round, but he even caused 
He moves for. the body of cavalry which he had on his lett to 
wardsome move forward; and it happened that this advance 
mare of the Russian Hussars brought them down to a 
spot which was near the ground where Lord Cardigan rode 
with his squadrons. It seems, however, that there was an in- 
tervening bend or rise in the formation of the ground, which 
prevented these two hostile bodies of cavalry from being visi- 
ble the one to the other. 

Lord Raglan, with some of his staff, had ridden forward to 
Lord Raglan's this part of the field. He met the advance of the 
merakgn enemy’s squadrons with an almost cold gaze. The 
joyous animation with which, from the summit of the knoll, he 
had watched the changeful battle—this had passed. He wore 
the look—men came to know it too well before he died—the 
look which used to show that he was feeling the stress of the 
French alliance, and dissembling the pain of lis anger. 


XLUIL. 

The world was old enough to know that, in order to be 
Question as to Made to yield its natural fruits, a victory ought to 
the wayin be followed up; and that, in general, a victorious 
which the re- : : = : : . ‘ 
treat shouldbe army 1s made to press on in pursuit until mghtfall 
Pee or other good cause makes it prudent or needful to 
halt. But the maps of this Crim Tartary gave no indication 
of the existence of any fresh water between the Alma and the 
Katcha—a stream some seven or eight miles distant. It seem- 
ed that unless the troops which might be pushed forward 
could reach the Katcha, and reach it, too, in strength enabling 
them to establish themselves on its banks, they would have to 
bivouac on the hills without the means of allaying the rage of 
thirst. Except at the mouth of the Alma, or at the mouth of - 
the Katcha, the nature of the coast did not allow free commu- 
nication between the Allied armies and the ships. It was half 
past four o’clock. Soon after six the sun would set. Since 
morning the soldiery of both armies had toiled under a burning 
sun. They were very weary; and many of them—indeed al- 
most all the English—were in a weakly state of health. These 
were reasons which made it needful for the Allies to effect 
their farther pursuit of the enemy by preconcerted arrange- 
ments. They were not, I think, reasons which warranted a 
protracted halt of the whole of the Allied armies on the heights 
of the Alma. Lord Raglan had been swift to see what ought 
to be done by the Allies, and not less swift to determine what 
he himself could offer to do. He dez2med that the Allies ought 


620 - INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. ‘[Cuap. XLIV. 


ford Raglan's tO push forward. instantly with such portions of 
opinion. His their force as were the least wearied. We have 
pion: seen the share which the English soldiery had had 
in the work of the day; but, compared with the troops of the 
Ist, the 2nd, and the Light Divisions, Sir Richard England’s 
Division was fresh. With that force of infantry, together with 
the whole of his cavalry and horse artillery, Lord Raglan de- 
It is proposed Sired to press forward; but he required that a por- 
to the French. tion of the French army should take part in this 
movement, for he did not understand that the rout of the ene- 
my’s forces was so complete and irremediable as to put them 
in the power of one English division of infantry and a thou- 
sand horsemen. Besides, he well knew that (even though the 
aid should be given for mere form’s sake and not for actual 
use) there was a political reason which forbade him from press- 
ing forward without making sure that his advance would be 
accompanied by a portion of the French army; tor it was near- 
ly certain that an English General advancing on the afternoon 
of a battle, and leaving his sensitive allies in the rear, would 
so mortify the French people as to put the alliance and even 
the ruler who contrived it in grievons peril. 

Accordingly, General Airey proposed to General Martim- 
prey, the chief of the French Staff, that the whole of our cay- 
alry, together with one English division of infantry, and such 
portion of the French army as the Marshal might think fit, 
should move forward and press the enemy’s retreat. 

The answer was that any farther advance of the French on 
They decline that day was ‘impossible ; and the necessity of re- 


40.move. turning to where the knapsacks had been laid was 
once more used as the reason which forbade all forward move- 
Question ment. Men may fairly surmise that a sterner meth- 


Whether o od than that which Lord Raglan took would have 


sterner meth- 


od with the served his purpose better, and that if he had simply 
have answered O'Cered his cavalry and Sir Richard England’s Di- 
better. vision to advance, M. St. Arnaud would have been 
compelled to follow. But to act upon such a speculation as 
that would have been hardly consistent with the duties 1m- 
posed upon the English General. Lord Raglan, it is true, was 
a soldier acting against an enemy in the field. But he was 
something more. He was a diplomatist specially charged with 
the care of that fragile structure on which the war was rest- 
ing. He was charged with the care of the French. alliance. 
Except on grounds of paramount cogency, he had no right to 
break loose from the fetters by which his Queen’s Government 
had thought fit to bind their country. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 621 


XLIV. 

Lord Raglan watched the advance of the Russian cavalry 
Tlie closeof until he saw it come to a halt. Then it seemed— 
the battle. = he was used of old to read such signs—it seemed 
that he regarded this movement and this halt of the enemy’s 
horse as a kind of farewell gesture which marked the end of 
the battle; for, turning his horse’s head, he slowly rode back 
to the ground where his infantry stood. 

When our soldiers observed the approach of the Head-Quar- 
Thecheers tet Staff, they looked eagerly into the group that 
which greet they might see if amongst the plumed horsemen 
ford Ragin. the Chief himself were coming; and the moment 
they got a sure sight of the frock with the half empty sleeve, 
it came into their hearts to offer to their General that which 
is of other worth than vulgar treasures, nay, that which in 
common times the world can not give. They brought him the 
greeting which a proud soldiery can bestow upon their chief 
in the hour of victory and upon the field of battle. Begun at 
first by one corps, taken up by the next, and then by the next 
again, the cheers flew on from regiment to regiment, and 
tracked the chief in his path, till all along, from the spurs of 
the Telegraph Height to the easternmost bounds of the crest 
which had been won by the Highland brigade, those desolate 
hills in Crim Tartary were made to sound like England. And 
the sound traveled back to the plateau on which the French 
were halted, and descended also the slopes where our dead and 
wounded lay thick. There many a red-coat, so wounded that 
the roar of artillery and the tramp of battalions had become 
to him mere idle sounds, would yet find his heart stirred anew 
by the English cheers on the heights, and would raise himself 
on his arm and strive so to use his last strength that, in the 
swelling tumult. of the voices above, his own faltering ‘hurrah!’ 
might be one. 

But, pensive and intent on sad thoughts, Lord Raglan now 
He rides back rode down into the valley, recrossed the river, and 
op oiotkg entered the village of Bourliouk. The flames had 
wounded. been extinguished ; and in some of the farm-build- 
ings less burnt than the rest, there lay many wounded officers, 
Amongst the painful scenes in those barns and sheds Lord 
Raglan passed a long time, giving tender care to the sufferers. 
Yet of the sunlight of that day there were nearly two hours 
remaining. There was a routed enemy in front; and be- 
yond, there was the mighty prize for which the invaders were 
eome. 


7) a 


622 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


Ambition lends strength and momentum to the purposes of 
a general. Lord Raglan gave his heart to wounded men. A 
commander wrapped in self, and burning for fame, would have 
risked a breach of the French alliance, would have hardened 
his heart, and, killing perhaps some few of his people with 
cruel fatigue, would have drunk of the Katcha that night. If 
he had done thus, the reconnaissance of the next morning 
would have brought him some knowledge of hardly less worth 
than a victory. | 

The Allied forces bivouacked on the ground which they had 
The Allied ar- won. The French were on the Telegraph Height. 
rn the srowsa Lhe English head-quarters were established on the 
they have won. left bank of the river, near the road leading up from 
the bridge, and almost on the site of that Causeway battery 
which, until it was touched by the mastering key, had barred 
the mouth of the Pass. 

In the evening our army was joined by Colonel Torrens 
Colonel Tor. With the troops which had been left at Kamishlu to 
rens'sforee. Clear the beach; and, at about nine o’clock, whilst 
Pate in Lord Raglan was dining in his little marquee with 

e evening. : 

Lori Raglanin Only one man for his guest, Torrens came to report 
his marquee. his arrival. A third cover was laid for him. He 
had made a forced march, and was in bitter pain because his 
great haste had not availed to bring him up in time for the bat- 
tle. With kind, frank, thoughtful words, Lord Raglan strove 
to soothe him. ; 


/ 
XLV. 


The position which Kiriakoff had taken up was not held for 
Continuation ™many minutes. ‘To any calm man who looked from 
of the Russian that ridge toward the north it must have been plain 
are that the Allies were making no movement in pur- 
suit. But—for thus powerful and thus wayward is the imag- 
ination of man in his fears —the Russians were no sooner in 
safety than vague terrors were assailing their minds, and panic 
When theRus- Degan to drive them. The brave soldiery who had 
sian soldiery stood superbly firm when shot were tearing their 
have nolonger |, k a ‘ed 
an enemy near Tanks, were scare by phantom thoughts, and the 
them, their re’ square-built, hard, rigid battalions which had check- 
treat degener- ° A ° . 
ates into a dis- ered the hill-sides on the Alma now dissolved into | 
orderly flight. shapeless masses. Even when, after accomplishing 
several miles of retreat, the troops at length reached the hill- 
sides which looked down on the banks of the Katcha, they had 
no belief that the Allies would suffer them to drink of its wa- 
ters in peace; and the army of the Czar degenerating into a 


— ee 
all ! 


Cuap. XLIV. ] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 623 


helpless throng, officers, men, horses, guns, tumbrils, carts laden 

- with stores, carts laden with the wounded, all pressed into a 
gorge leading down to the ford; and then the disorder was 
so complete, and the masses which choked the gorge were so 
dense and helpless, that it seemed as though a small force of 
cavalry and horse artillery would have sufficed to make the 
whole army prisoners or bring it to utter ruin. 

When they had crossed the Katcha, the bulk of the troops 
still hurried on, though with no idea of the direction they were 
to take, except that.their course ought to be a prolongation 
of the line of the retreat already accomplished. 

But presently even that poor clew failed them; for some got 
to imagine that, instead of falling back upon Sebastopol, they 
were to make for Baktchi Serai. Then darkness came; and, 
there being no landmarks, the army was as a child that has 
lost its way at night in a trackless moor. Sometimes the mass- 
es were bent in their course by a voice shouting out, ‘To the 
‘right ;) and then again they would swerve the other way up- 
der the impulse of a cry, ‘'To the left.’ All idea of bearings 
was so utterly lost, that even in their flight the fugitives could 
no longer be sure that they were retreating ; for they did not 
know but that they might be marching all the while toward 
‘an enemy. Afterward the uselessness of this wild movement 
in the dark got to be understood; and, shouts for a halt be- 
‘coming general, the masses at length stood still.! 

_ All this while the Allied armies were quietly bivouacking 
upon the banks of the Alma, at a distance of several miles from 
the enemy; and the Staff of the Russian army having ascer- 
tained that no pursuit was going on, mounted officers and Cos- 
sacks were sent to announce to the wandering battalions that 
the Katcha was the rendezvous. But some of the messengers, 
having received these directions before they crossed the river, 
carried on the very words intrusted to them with the servile 
exactness of a Chinese copyist, and told the troops which had 
long ago forded the stream, and were thence marching south- 
ward, that they were to ‘go on to the Katcha.’ Orders thus 
conveyed led to a belief that the stream already passed was 
not the Katcha; and, although in reality the troops had over- 


1 One day at Balaclava I had some conversation with Lord Raglan re- 
specting the panic which scized the Russian army on the banks of the Kat- 
cha, and he told me that he thought the panic may have been occasioned by 
the appearance of his patrols; but I have never heard from any other source 
that our cavalry patroled to the neighborhood of the Katcha on the evening 
of the battle; and I imagine that Lord Raglan must have spoken rather 
from what he inferred than from what he knew. 


624. INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuap. XLIV. 
stepped the place of rendezvous, they imagined that they had 
not yet reached it. | 

Thus confusion was prolonged; but the halt began, after a 
time, to produce good effects. The officers called for men who 
could undertake to find the way back to the Katcha. - Some 
were found. These acted as guides; and at midnight the 
wearied troops regained the river. For about two hours they 
rested ; but then—by panic, it is believed, in the first instance, 
and afterward by orders which the panic engendered — the 
army was hastily roused, and thrown once more into full re- 
treat. It moved upon Sebastopol. 


XLVI. 


In this action the French lost three officers killed ;? and, on 
Losses of the grounds which he deemed, and (privately) stated to 
repos be, to his mind ‘ conclusive,’ Lord Raglan came to 
the belief that their whole loss in killed was 60, and their num- 
OftheEn- ber of wounded 500.3 The English army lost 25 
a. officers and 19 sergeants killed, and 81 officers and 
102 sergeants wounded; and of rank and file, 318 killed and 
1438 wounded, making, with the 19 who were missing, and 
who are supposed to have been buried in the ruins of the 
houses in the village, a total loss of 2002. The loss of the Rus- 
Ofthe Rus slans in killed and wounded was officially stated at 
BIAS. 5709, and it is believed that later and more accu- 
rate computations would carry the loss up to a much higher 


1 My knowledge respecting the enemy’s retreat to the Katcha is mainly de- 
rived from Chodasiewicz ; but on the 23rd of September the peasantry of the 
village of Eskel, on the banks of the Katcha, described to me the scene of 
panic which they had witnessed in the night of the 20th. 

* St. Arnaud’s Dispatch. 

° The French official accounts state the total loss of their army in killed 
and wounded at 1339 (or, according to M. St. Arnaud’s dispatch, 1343), but 
those statements have not obtained such credence as to induce me to place 
the figures in the text. Lord Raglan, I know, believed not only that the 
French returns were grossly erroneous, but that they were intentionally fals- 
ified ; for, in the same letter in which he states it to be ‘impossible’ their ac- 
counts could be true, he also speaks of the ‘pains’ which the French author- 
ities took to make him believe them. On the other hand, I think it right to 
‘say that I am acquainted with the grounds on which Lord Raglan based his 
low estimate of the French losses, and that, not thinking them quite so con- 
clusive as he did, I have abstained from hazarding a positive statement on 
the subject. The field of battle did not give indication of considerable loss- 
es by the French; and I recollect that, the morning after the battle, a French 
soldier told me that he estimated the whole loss of his people at fifty (une 
cinquantaine). As an actual estimate of the losses, of course, his statement 
was of no worth, but it went toward showing what was the first impression of 
the French army as to the extent of the carnage. . 


2 rn 


Cap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 625 


number. Except the Russians left wounded on the field, there 
were scarcely any prisoners taken by the Allies; and by the 
Russians none. Amongst the wounded Russians left on the 
field and taken by the English there were two general officers. 
Great quantities of small arms were left upon the ground ; but 
of prouder trophies there were few. The French captured a 
The trophies SMall four-wheeled open carriage, in which a clerk 
of victory were had been traveling with a quantity of office forms 
oe and papers. The English had the gun taken by 
Captain Bell, and the howitzer abandoned by the enemy in the 
Great Redoubt.! 


XLVII. 
Whether it was wise to assail the enemy on the very ground 
Question where he sought to make his stand, is a question 


whether the : : ; ae 
attack upon Gepending upon the measure of respect which was 


the position of Cue from an Anglo-French army to a Russian force 
the Aimecould one third less in numbers. On the inland or east- 
avoided. ern flank of the position on the Alma the country 
was open, and therefore it was possible for the Allies to avoid 
all encounter with the enemy on his chosen strong-hold by tak- 
ing ample ground to their left, and boldly marching round him. 
If a man so resolute as Marshal Pelissier had been then at the 
head of the French army, this perhaps is what he would have 
proposed to do. At all events, this is the way in which, under 
like circumstances, he would now undertake to deal with a 
Rassian army. But then he judges things by the light of what 
has since passed, and especially by the light of his own great 
achievement. ‘To have undertaken so daring a flank move- 
ment as this in the presence of an unhumbled and confident 
foe, would have implied a steadfast faith in the excellence of 
the whole Allied army, and a somewhat early perception of 
that want of nimbleness and enterprise on the part of the Rus- 
sians which was afterward found to be characteristic of their 
field operations. Those who know how heavily—even down 


* On the following day the French quietly came with an artillery team, 
and were going to carry off one of the guns taken by the English. An En- 
glish officer caught them in the act, and prevented them from executing their 


“purpose. This enterprising attempt was the more curious, since it happened 


that the gun ‘was more than a mile distant from the ground on which the 
nearest of the French troops had been moving. Apparently it was calcu- 
lated that any Englishman who chanced to observe the French drivers would 
assume that they were acting under authority from Lord Raglan, and that, 
when once the gun was in the French lines, the transcendent importance of 
the alliance, and of a cordial feeling between the two armies, would be relied 
on as grounds which might prevent the English General from reclaiming it. 


Vor. I.—D pb 


626 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA.  [Cuar. XLIV. 


to the day of the Alma—the thought of the Moscow campaign 
still weighed upon the mind of the French, will hardly wonder 
that Marshal St. Arnaud and his advisers should have shrunk 
from the idea of lending the flank of the French army to the 
enterprises of a foe who had still a great warlike repute, and 
whose numbers were imperfectly known. Besides, since the 
French had taken the right, the success of any such plan, and 
with it the honor and safety of the whole Allied force, would 
have been made to depend upon the stability of the French 
troops alone, rather than upon the prowess of the whole Allied 
army. Even if Marshal St. Arnaud had desired to make the © 
venture, there is no reason for believing that Lord Raglan 
would have consented to move into the interior, with a French 
army marching on his right between him and the enemy.! To 
have done so would have implied great confidence in the stead- 
iness of the French army. 


hussian position on the Alma. 


But, whatever be the worth of a plan for turning instead of 
The courseac- Attacking the Russian position on the Alma, it is 
tually taken. certain that Marshal St. Arnaud and his advisers 
thought it would be more prudent to choose the course which 
they actually took to possess themselves of the unoccupied 
ground which lay between the Russian position and the sea- 
shore, to pit the rest of the French forces against Prince Ments- 
chikoff’s left, and to leave to Lord Raglan the duty of dealing 
with the enemy’s centre as well as with his left wing. 


1 RIP F IPCs eS 
Russian Army. 


1 ] y 
English Army. | Me 


French 


The first. diagram above will perhaps convey some idea of the nature 
of the hazard which would have been incurred by venturing upon a flank 
march. 


Cuar.XLIV.] INVASION OF ‘THE CRIMEA. 627 


XLVIII. 

Told summarily, the battle of the Alma was this: — The 
Summary of French seized the empty ground which divided the 
the battle’ = enemy from the sea, and then undertook to assail 
the enemy’s left wing, but were baffled by the want of a road 
for Canrobert’s artillery, and by the exceeding cogency of the 
rule which forbids them from engaging their infantry on open 
ground without the support of cannon. Their failure placed 
them in jeopardy; for they had committed so large a propor- 
tion of their force to the distant part of the West Cliffand the 
sea-shore, that for nearly an hour they lay much at the mercy 
of any Russian general who might have chosen to take advan- 
tage of their severed condition. But, instead of turning to his 
own glory the mistake the French had been making, Prince 
Mentschikoff hastened to copy it, wasting time and strength in 
a march toward the sea-shore, and a countermarch back to the 
Telegraph. Still, the sense the French had of their failure, and 
the galling fire which Kiriakoff’s two batteries were by this 
time bringing to bear on them, began to create in their army a 
grave discontent, and sensations scarce short of despondency. . 
Seeing the danger to which this condition of things was lead- 
ing, and becoming, for other reasons, impatient, Lord Raglan 
determined to order the final advance of the English infantry, 
without waiting any longer for the time when Canrobert and 
Prince Napoleon should be established on the plateau. So the 
English infantry went forward, and in a few minutes the bat- 
talions which followed Codrington had not only defeated one 
of the two heavy ‘columns of attack’ which marched down to 
assail them, but had stormed and carried the Great Redoubt. 
From that moment the hill-sides on the Alma were no longer 
a fortified position; but they were still a battle-field, and a 
battle-field on which, for a time, the combatants were destined 
to meet with checkered fortune ; for, not having been support- 
ed at the right minute, and being encompassed by great or- 
ganized numbers, Codrington’s disordered force was made to 
fall back under the weight of the Vladimir column, and its re- 
treat involved the centre battalion of the brigade of Guards. 
Nearly at the same time, Kiriakoff, with his great ‘column of 
‘the eight battalions,’ pushed Canrobert down from the crest 
he had got to, obliging or causing him for a time to hang back 
under the cover of the steep. At that time the prospects of 
the Allies were overcast. But then the whole face of the bat- 
tle was suddenly changed by the two guns which Lord Rag- 
lan had brought up to the knoll; for not only did their fire 


628 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. — (Cuar. XLIV. 


extirpate the Causeway batteries, and so lay open the Pass, 
but it tore through the columns of Prince Mentschikoff’s in- 
fantry reserves, and drove them at once from the field. This 
discomfiture of the Russian centre could not but govern the 
policy of Kiriakoff, obliging him to conform to its movement 
of retreat ; and he must have been the more ready to acknowl- 
edge to himself the necessity of the step he was taking, since 
by _ this time he had suffered the disaster which was inflicted 
upon his great ‘column of the eight battalions’ by the French 
artillery. ” He retreated without being molested by the French 
infautry, and took up a position at a distance of two miles 
from the Alma. Meanwhile, after a sheer fight of infantry, the 
whole strength that the enemy had on the Kour gané Hill was 
broken and turned to ruin by the Guards and the Highland- 
ers. henceforth the slaughter that is wrought by artillery 
upon retreating masses was all that remained to be fulfilled. 


XLIX. 

The trophies, we saw, were scanty. But was there a gain 
Question how Of that priceless spoil which one nation takes from 
, far the Allies © another, when it proves itself the better in arms? 
take gloryto ‘The Western Alliance had the ear of Europe, and 
themselves. it, awarded to itself an unstinted measure of glory. 
Was this glory honestly taken ? 

The Allies were more than 60,000, and the strength of the 
Russians fell short of that by one third. This was a disparity 
which made it unbecoming for the Great Alliance of the West 
to indulge in the language of a boisterous triumph. But, be- 
sides that the str ength of the ground went some way toward 

making the conflict equal, the very faults and shortcomings of 
the Allies had the effect. of putting a heavy stress upon some 
portions of their united army; for, by sending two fifths of 
his army to the sea-shore, and by crowding the remainder of 
it upon a narrow front, the French Marshal placed Prince 
Gortschakoff and General Kvetzinski upon a numerical equal- 
ity with their English foes; and, the Russian artillery being 

vastly more powerful than ours, and the ground being in- 
trenched and singularly strong by nature, the Russians were 
in circumstances which tended to give them a great advantage 
over their English adversaries. Besides, though our forces 
were equal in numbers to the part of the Russian army with 
which they had to deal, yet it happened that, in each distinct 
infantry fight, the English battalions were almost always con- 
fronted by masses far’ greater in numerical strength. Justly, 
therefore, there may be rendered to some of the components 


_ ae. > * 


Cuar. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 629 


of the Allied army a part of the glory which History must re- 
fuse to the aggregate host. | 

At three o’clock, as we saw, the battle had been suffered to 
lapse into such a condition that there was then bitter need of 
a general, and of troops so placed in the field, and so inclined 
toward the practice of close fighting, as to be able to restore— 
to restore, as it were, by sheer foree—the waning fortune of 
the day. How the occasion was met, this History has shown. 
I narrate, and soldiers will comment. They must judge, and 
say whether for simplicity’s sake it be better to pile up a heap 
of praise, and distribute it, like a cargo of medals, amongst all 
the French, English, and Turks who heard the sound of the 
guns; or, in a harsher and more careful spirit, to part off the 
troops which fought hard from the troops which scarce fought 
at all, and to show by whose ordering it was that the course 
of the battle was governed. 

I have been eager to acknowledge the valor and the steadi- 
ness of the Russian infantry. If I had caused it to appear that, 
upon the whole, Marshal St. Arnaud and the troops he com- 
manded had done marvels on the day of the Alma, I should 
have been helping to prolong a belief in that which I know to 
be false, and should be even running counter to what, with 
good reason, I hold to be the opinion of the French army ;! 
but I have tried to do careful justice to those who were then 
our allies by marking and commending the warlike quality 
which was displayed by their artillerymen, as well as by their 
keen, bold, active skirmishers. Ofmy own countrymen I have 
hardly once suffered myself to speak in words of praise. Ihave 
only told what they did. 


L. 
Those three sunny hours of the 20th of September were the 
time, and the only time, when a French and an English army 
stood abreast in an open pitched battle ;? and therefore it is 


1 I speak in great measure from knowledge acquired long subsequently to 
the battle, but the conviction of which I speak was not long to show itself in 
the French army. Writing three days after the battle, and speaking of the 
conviction which was produced upon the English army by the fact that Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud had not ‘kept moving on after he had turned the enemy’s 
‘left,’ Lord Raglan says: ‘I have reason to believe that the same feeling is 
‘prevalent amongst the officers of the French army.’ For any one who was 
not in the Crimea during the month which followed the battle of the Alma, 
it would be difficult to form a conception of the state into which the repute 
of the French army had fallen. Later events (and the first of these was the 
brilliant charge of two squadrons of the Chasseurs d’ Afrique at Balaclava) 
showed that the warlike spirit of France was not extinct in her army. 

* The English at Inkerman were valiantly aided by a body of French troops; 


630 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


that, when many generations shall have passed away, mankind 
will still gaze and gaze upon a barren hill-side in Crim Tartary, 
comparing the demeanor of the two great rivals of the West 
whilst they fought side by side on the Alma. Yet, if people 
shall end this comparison without making honest allowance for 
the ban I am going to speak of, they will do a wrong to the 
warlike repute of France. 

It would be unjust to look upon the action between Marshal 
Cause ofany St. Arnaud and the Russian left wing as a fair sam- 
shortcomings ple of what a French army can do. That glance at 
on the part of - : 
the French the things done in Paris which helped us to under- 
APT. stand the origin of the Anglo-French alliance, will 
now serve to teach us the cause of any shortcomings which 
may be attributed to the army commanded by Marshal St. 
Arnaud.} We saw something of a strange decree, which en- 
acted that services rendered by military men in their opera- 
tions against Frenchmen should hold good as titles to advance- 
ment in the same way as though they were deeds done in war 
against the foreigner.? Incredible as it may seem, that decree 
was long observed to the full;3 and the shameful principle 
which it involved was made to weigh heavily upon France 
during several of the months which followed the landing at 
Old Fort. Indeed, the principle, though partly waived for a 
time in 1855, was found to be still in dire operation long after 
the close of the Russian war. Just as in a later year the 
French Emperor intrusted to a scared and bewildered literary 
man the command of a whole French army in Italy, so now he 
committed the honor of the flag—committed it almost exclu- 
sively—to men who had shared with him in the adventure 
which put France under his feet. His reckoning was that, 
whether it were led by honorable and skilled commanders, or 
were tossed and flung into action by him and his December 
friends, a French army engaged in a short, brisk war against a 
Continental state would always be likely to push its way to 
more or less of success; and that if it should chance to do this 
under the leadership, or apparent leadership, of him and his 
friends, he and they would become similar to heroes. If they 

could attain to be thus thought of for a time, they might hope 
that for a still longer period they would enjoy the immunity 
and the thousand rewards which nations are accustomed to 
lavish upon victorious commanders 
but that great fight was not one of which it could be said that a ‘ French ra 
an English army stood abreast in an open pitched battle.’ 

1 Ante, cap. 14. > [hid., Decree of 5th December, 1851. 

3 It was carried to the length of making Magnan and St. Arnaud Marshals 
of France. 


Cuap. XLIV.] INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 631 


This was the principle which governed the choice of the 
man to whose charge, on the day of the Alma, the honor of 
the French arms was left. He who commanded the army was 
St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, the person suborned by Fleury. 
Under him, in the Crimea, there were four Divisions of French 
infantry. He who commanded the Ist of these Divisions was 
Canrobert. This officer, as I have said, was not without hon- 
est titles to military distinction; but, whilst he had a profes- 
sional repute which would have earned him the approval of 
even the most loyal of monarchs, he had also the qualification 
which entitled him to the favor of the French Emperor.. He 
had commanded one of the brigades which operated against 
the gay boulevards on the 4th of December. The 2nd Divi- 
sion was commanded by Bosquet. Bosquet was a man with- 
out a stain; but he was the only French General of Division 
at the Alma who could say that he did not owe his command 
to the December plot; and, since it happened that he was left 
isolated with only one brigade during the whole time when 
the issue of the battle was pending, his presence at the Alma 
was only an imperfect exception to what was, as it were, the 
general rule. He who commanded the large detached force 
of some 9000 men! which first crossed the river at its mouth 
was General Bouat; and Bouat, it seems, was an officer who 
earned his command by exploits against Parisians in the bou- 
levard, the rue St. Denis, or the neighborhood of the Nouvelle 
France.2,- He who commanded the 3rd Division was Prince 
Napoleon. He who commanded the 4th Division was Forey ; 
and no man could come within the principle of selection more 
clearly than he did, for it was he of whom I spoke when I said 
that he had suffered himself to be used as the assailant and the 
jailer of an unarmed Legislature. There were, besides, the 
Lourmels, the Espinasses, and numbers of others, no doubt, 
whose names could be easily found in their Emperor’s list of 
worthies. Therefore it is that the part which was taken by 
Marshal St. Arnaud and his troops in the battle of the Alma 
was no fair sample of what could be done by a French army. 
It was only a sample of what a French army could manage to 
do when it labored under the weight of a destiny which or- 
dained that all its chiefs should be men chosen for their com- 
plicity in a midnight plot, or else for acts of street slaughter.? 
Because they had perpetrated an extensive massacre of their 


1 One of Bosquet’s brigades, and the whole of the Turkish Contingent ex- 
cept the two battalions left to guard the baggage. 

' With the 33rd Regiment. 

“ Prine? Napoleon’s complicity was only, as I am inclined to believe, a 


632 INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. [Cuar. XLIV. 


unarmed fellow-countrymen, there was no certainty, perhaps, 
that they might not be men firm and able in honest war against 
the foreigner; but also there was no such close similarity be- 
tween what these men had done in Paris, and what they were 
meant to do in the Crimea, as to warrant the notion of intrust- 
ing to them almost exclusively the honor of the French flag. 
There was a salient point of difference between the boulevards 
and the hill-sides of the Alma. The Russians were armed. 
No! The Power which fought that day by the side of En- 
gland was not, after all, mighty France—brave, warlike, im- 
petuous France. It was only that intermittent thing which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is not. It was what people call‘The 
‘French Empire.’ 


LI. 

The Battle of the Alma seemed to clear the prospects of the 
Effect ofthe campaign, and even of the war. It confirmed to 
prone ot the Allies that military ascendency over Russia 
the campaign. which had been more than half gained already by 
the valor of the Ottoman soldiery. It lent the current sanc- 
tion of a victory to the hazardous enterprise of the invasion. 
It ended the perils of the march from Kamishlu, and made 
smooth the whole way to the Belbec. It established the Al- 
lies as invaders in a province of Russia. It did more. Upon 
condition that they would lay instant hands on the prize; it 
gave them Sebastopol. 


eomplicity after the fact; but it is, of course, clear enough that he owed his 
command entirely to the Coup d’ Etat. 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Page 40. In note 2, Sir George Larpent should be Mr. Larpent. 
Page 49. ‘should be strictly executed.’—June, 1850.—‘ Eastern Papers,’ 
art i, p. 2. 
3 Page 50. ‘said our Foreign Secretary.’—In his dispatch of the 28th of 
January, 1853. 

Page 53. ‘ Prince Garart.’—So spelled in the official dispatches; but it 
has been suggested, and probably with truth, that the person meant was 
Prince Gagarin, one of the secretaries or attachés of the Russian Legation 
at Constantinople. 

Page 91. ‘ For almost two years Sir Stratford Canning had been absent from 
* Constantinople.’—No; not nearly so long. It was not till June, 1852, that 
his absence from Constantinople began. 

Page 127.—Instead of note 1, the author gives the following :—‘ Even if 
‘the Governments of France and England were not zz honor bound to pro- 
‘tect the Sultan,’ ete.—Lord Clarendon to Lord Cowley. ‘Eastern Papers,’ 
part ii. p. 321. 

Page 133. Instead of note 1, the following :—Count Mensdorf, I believe, 
was an honest soldier, too high-spirited to be capable of shrinking from 
what he understood to be his duty; but he had had little of the training 
needed for a diplomatist, and (as is often the case with the representatives 
of Austria at foreign Courts) he was not kept well informed of the policy 
which his Government was pursuing. It was not in deference to his own 
tastes or wishes that he accepted the mission to St. Petersburg. An illus- 
tration of the courtier-like attitude assumed by the French Envoy will be 
found in the note to p. 496. 

Page 157.. ‘he hit upon a general officer who was christened, it seems, Jacques 
Arnaud Le Roy.’—Giving in a formal way its list of the new. Ministry of 
the 27th of October, the ‘ Annuaire,’ an authority favorable to the Elysée, 
has these words: ‘A la guerre, Jacques Arnaud le Roy de St. Arnaud,’ p. 
352. 

Page 161. ‘ they might soon be called upon to act against Paris and against the 
‘ Constitution.’—Granier de Cassaignac, p. 392. There, the 26th is the day 
of the month which the historian mentions, but he gives Thursday (which 
fell on the 27th) as the day of the week when the meeting took place. 

Page 161. Instead of note 1, the following :—‘ All the generals embraced 
‘each other, and from that moment it might be said with certainty that 
‘France was going to come out of the abyss.’—Ibid. p. 392. The names 
of the twenty-one generals will be found ibid. p. 393. 

Dp 2 


a 


634 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Page 163. ‘vowed anew that his duty was to maintain the Republic.— 
‘My duty is to baffle their perfidious projects, to maintain the Republic, and 
‘to save the country,’ etc.—‘ Annuaire,’ App. p. 60. 

Page 163. Instead of note 1, the following:—The proclamation to the 
army contained this passage: ‘In 1830, as in 1848, they treated you as 
‘conquered men. After having spurned your heroic disinterestedness, they 
‘disdained to consult your sympathies and your wishes, and yet you are the 
‘élite of the nation. ‘To-day, in this solemn moment, I desire that the 
‘army may make its voice heard.’—Granier de Cassaignac, vol. ii. p. 404. 
A copy of the proclamation will also be found in the ‘ Annuaire’ for 1851. 
This last publication (which must be distinguished from the ‘ Annuaire 
‘des Deux Mondes’) gives an account of the events of December, written in 
a spirit favorable to the Elysée; but the Appendix contains a full collection 
of official documents. 

Page 165. ‘the announcement of measures not hitherto disclosed.’—‘The 
‘Assembly,’ he wrote, ‘has been dissolved amid the applause of the whole 
‘population of Paris..—Circular to the Prefects. 

Page 165. ‘striking some of them with the butt-ends of their muskets.’— 
The names of nine of these are given in the ‘ Recueil,’ p. 64, ; and besides 
these, the seizure of MM. Daru and De Blois is stated.—Ibid. pp. 6, 7. 

Page 165. ‘rode through some of the streets of Paris.’—Fleury rode in 
front of the cortége, waving his sword and trying to get the people in the 
streets to cheer. 

Page 167. ‘assembled at the Mayoralty of the 10th arrondissement.’—‘ Re- 
‘cueil d’Actes Officielles,’ p. 60. In that and in pp. 61-3, the names of 220 
Deputies are given. 

Page 167. ‘ President and his accomplices.’—‘ Recueil d’ Actes Officielles,’ 
pp. 37, 45. The report of the proceedings of the Assembly is from the short- 
hand-writer’s notes.—See ibid. p. 35. 

Page 167. ‘ One of the Vice-Presidents.’-—Namely, M. Vitet. Through 
all those last moments of the struggle between law and force, M. Vitet’s de- 
meanor was admirable for its firmness and dignity. Of this I am assured 
by one of the most eminent of the many statesmen who were there present. 

Page 167. ‘any Deputies offering resistance.’ —It was in the second of the 
two written orders produced that the prison of Mazas was designated. It 
is given, ‘ Recueil d’ Actes Officielles,’ p. 57. 

Page 167. Instead of note 2, the following :—The order rendered int 
English was in these words: ‘Commandant! Jn consequence of the orders 
‘of the Minister of War, cause to be immediately occupied the Mayoralty 
‘of the 10th arrondissement, and cause to be arrested, if necessary, such of 
‘the representatives as shall not instantly obey the order to disperse. 
‘(Signed) The General-in-Chief Magnan.’—Ibid. p. 57. 

Page 167. ‘collared by officers of police and led out.’—Ibid. p. 60. ™M. 
Benoist d’Azy was one of the Vice-Presidents, and the other Vice-President 
collared by the soldiery was M. Vitet. 

Page 168. ‘Jt was now only two o'clock in the afternoon.’—Ibid. p. 12; 
but the procés-verbal makes it later—viz., twenty minutes past three o’clock. 
Ibid. p. 60. - 

Page 168. ‘raised to two hundred and _ thirty-five.’—According to the 
‘Recneil’ the number was 232.—La Vérité, ‘ Recueil d’Actes Officielles,’ p. 
64. The diff-rence is occasioned by including, or not including, M. Daru, 
and M. de Blois, and one other. 

Page 169. ‘ Into these the two hundred and thirty-five members of the Assem- 
‘ bly were thrust.’—Not all in one batch, but in three. The last batch was so 
large a one, that the prison-vans had to be reinforced by some omnibuses ; 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION: 635 


and some few of the Deputies were left behind for a time in the barrack — 
Ibid. p. 15. 

Page 169. ‘ Benowst d’Azy.’—One of the Vice-Presidents of the Assem- 
bly. Among the Deputies thrown into the prison there was also M. Vitet, 
another of the Vice-Presidents. 

Page 169. Instead of note 1, the following :—The facts mentioned in the 
above paragraph are not, I believe, controverted in any important point. A 
full account of what passed will be found in the well-known letter of M. de 
Tocqueville (now printed in the collection of his letters), and in the ‘ Re- 
‘cueil’ above quoted, pp. 13, 14, 60 et seq. 

Page 170. ‘the Judyes were driven from the bench.’—The ‘ Annuaire’ 
says triumphantly that two Commissaries of Police ‘interrupted this fresh 
‘attempt at legal resistance,’ p. 373. 

Page 170. Instead of note 1, the following :—It seems that in his mission 
to the Elysée the process-server was accompanied by the President of the 
Court.—Ibid. ‘ Bulletin Frangais,’ p. 27. 

Page 174. Instead of note 3, the following :—Several of their letters to 
this effect appeared from time to time in the English journals; but M. Léon 
Faucher (who had been a few weeks before a member of the Cabinet) ad- 
dressed his indignant protest str aight to the President :— 

‘MonsIEUR LE PRESIDENT,—It is with a painful surprise that I see my 

‘name figuring among those of the members of a Consultative Commis- 
ston which you have just been instituting. I did not think I had given 
-you any right to offer me this insult [de me faire cette injure}. The serv- 
‘ices I have rendered to you in the belief that they were services rendered 
‘to the country, entitled me perhaps to expect from you a very different 
‘treatment. At all events my character deserved more respect.’—‘ Re- 
‘cueil,’ p. 24. 

Page 180. ‘calmly seen by this English officer.’-—Another English officer, 
who was in that part of the Boulevards which is at the corner of the Rue de 
Grammont, writes to me thus:—‘ Having been in Paris during the coup 
‘détat, and having been a spectator and nearly a victim when the French 
‘troops fired against harmless people on the Boulevards, and having been 
“standing, until forced to leave it, on the balcony of my club at the corner 
‘of the Rue de Grammont—which club was struck thirty-seven times, six 
‘balls entering the drawing-room—I can vouch for the correctness of your 
‘description of it.’—Letter dated 9th March, 1868. 

Page 184. To note 1, the author adds :—In the ‘ Quarterly Review’ of 
April, 1863, p. 527, it is stated that M. Xavier Durrieu says ‘he saw some- 
‘thing of the kind from his prison window,’ but that his ‘ words, as given by 
‘Mr. Kinglake in a note, do not quite bear out the somewhat exaggerated 
‘statement in the text.’ Since a statement like this has been ventured upon 
by a respectable publication, it seems right to give a translation of the above 
passage: ‘Several times, when the gate was shut, the sergeants of police 
‘threw themselves like tigers on the prisoners, w hose hands were fastened 
‘behind their backs. They knocked them down with loaded clubs. ‘They 
‘left them with their throats gurgling upon the flag-stone, where several of 
‘them expired. . . . It was so—neither more nor less ; we saw it from the 
‘windows of our cells, which looked out on the court.’ The writer adds :— 
‘A chaque prison son genre de supplice et de mort: on fusillait & Mazas, an 
‘Champ de Mars, et dans les divers postes de la ville. A la Préfecture de 
‘Police, on tuait a coup de casse-téte.’ ‘ At each prison there was its own 
‘kind of punishment and of death: they shot people at Mazas, on the 
‘Champ de Mars, and at the different posts (military posts) of the town, 
‘At the Prefecture of Police they killed people with loaded clubs.’ 


636 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION: 


Page 188. ‘French citizens to be shot by platoons of infantry in the night of 
‘the 4th and the night of the 5th of December,.’—I find that what I, in my cau- 
tion, thus speak of as a ‘ question’ has been recorded as a proved fact in the 
‘ Edinburgh Review.’ The article referred to is known to have been written 
by a gentleman who was in Paris at the time of the coup d’état, who was 
gifted more than most men with the power of seeking for truth in an impar- 
tial spirit, and who enjoyed great opportunities of informing himself concern- 
ing the events which had been passing in the French capital. The article 
asserts, in plain, unqualified terms, that ‘hundreds’ were ‘ put to death in 
‘the court-yards of the barracks, or in the subterraneous passages of the 
‘Tuileries.’-—‘ Edinburgh Review’ for April, 1852. Still, the writer did not 
see the prisoners shot with his own eyes, and I persist in my inclination to 
treat it as a ‘ question,’ whether these alleged executions did or did not take 
place in the nights of the 4th and 5th of December. 

Page 190. ‘should be dismissed.’—‘ You will immediately dismiss the 
‘juges de paix, the mayors, and the other functionaries, whose concurrence 
‘may not be assured, and appoint other men in their stead. To this end, 
‘you will call upon all the public functionaries to give you in writing their 
‘adhesion to the great measure which the Government has just adopted.’ 
Morny’s Circular to the Prefects.. ‘ Annuaire,’ Appendix, p. 67. 

Page 194. Instead of note 1, the following :—Decree of 8th December, 
inserted in the Moniteur of the 9th, It is also in the ‘ Annuaire,’ pp. 75, 
76. The transportation was to be to a penal colony in Algeria or Cayenne, 
and was to be for a period of five years at the least, and ten years at the 
most (Articles 1 and 2). The order for transportation was to be an act of 
administration. . In other words, every body whom the police authorities 
chose to designate as having belonged to a secret society was made liable to 
be transported without trial. This decree was superscribed Liberty, Equal- 
ity, Fraternity. I observed that, within forty-eight hours from the time when 
they thus got France down—viz., on the 10th of December—the brethren of 
the Elysée began their ‘concessions’ to railways and other companies. 
Thenceforth, as might be expected, ‘concessions’ went on at a merry rate. 
See whole lists of them in the Appendices to the ‘ Annuaire.’ Those who 
know how vast have been the sums expended by our public companics in 
obtaining ‘ Private Acts of Parliament,’ may form some idea of the impor- 
tance of the patronage in this direction which the brethren got into their 
hands. 

Page 195. Instead of note 2, the following :—Granier de Cassaignac, vol. 
ii. p. 438. To meet the cost of these wholesale transportations an extraor- 
dinary credit was opened on the 28th of January. It is only the title of the 
decree, and not the sum fixed, which is given in the ‘ Annuaire,’ Appendix, 
p- 95. 

Page 196. ‘has been done to living men.’—I have not ventured to speak of 
the number of these hapless sufferers farther than to use the phrase, * the 
‘two thousand men whose sufferings are the best known ;’ but the conduct. 
. ors of the ‘ Edinburgh Review,’ who were armed with a great deal of trust- 
worthy information on the subject, conceived themselves warranted in vent- 
uring upon the following words :—‘ All that is known, is that about three 
‘thousand two hundred have since disappeared from Paris’; they may have 
‘been killed in the Boulevards, and thrown into the large pits in which those 
‘who fell on that day were promiscuously interred ; they may have been 
‘among the hundreds who were put to death in the court-yards of the bar- 
‘racks, or in the subterraneous passages of the Tuileries ; they may be in the 
‘casements of Fort Bicétre, or in. the bagnes of Rochefort, or they may be at 
‘sea on their way to Cayenne. . . . We have already stated that the 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 637 


“number of persons undergoing or sentenced by these cruelties is believed 
‘to exceed ten thousand. A hundred thousand more are supposed to be in the 
‘vaults and casemates which the French dignify with the name of prisons, 
‘often piled, crammed, and wedged together so closely that they can scarce- 
“ly change their positions.’—‘ Edinburgh Review,’ vol. xev. p. 319. 

Page 198. ‘within forty- eight hours from the receipt of a dispatch of the 
3rd of December.’—‘ Annuaire,’ Appendix, p. 67. M. St. Arnaud’s circular 
to the Generals of Division ordered that the vote of the soldiers be taken 
within forty-eight hours, and also said, ‘The President reckons on the sup- 
‘port of the nation and of the army; and, so far as concerns your Division, 
‘on the energy of your attitude, the prompt and severe repression of the 
‘slightest attempt at disturbance.’—Ibid. 

Page 198. ‘nearly eight millions.’—7,439,216, against 640,737 noes.— 
‘ Annuaire,’ Appendix, p. 95. 

Page 199. * should pay him tribute and obey.’—The free way in which the 
purse of France was laid open by the success of the coup d’état may be in 
some measure gathered from the long catalogue of decrees opening supple- 
mentary and extraordinary credits, which is given in the Appendix to the 
* Annuaire,’ pp. 95 et seg. As was mentioned in a former note (ante, p. 
297), the ‘concessions’ to railway and other companies began so early as 
the 10th of December. See the Appendix to the ‘ Annuaire.’ 

Page 202. Instead of note 2, the following :—Decree of the 5th, inserted 
in the Moniteur of the 7th December: ‘Lorsq’une troupe organisée aura 
‘contribuée par des combats a rétablir l’ordre sur un point quelconque du 
‘territoire, ce service sera compté comme service de campagne.’—Article 
1, ‘ Annuaire,’ Appendix, p. 70. 

Page 206. ‘made merry with what they saw.’—It was not in this spirit 
that the Press of free Enyland dealt with France. In the journal which 
most carefully made it its study to give utterance to English opinion, the 
leading article said, ‘Speaking within the limits of historical truth, and 
‘upon the evidence of many eye-witnesses of these events, we affirm that 
‘the bloody and treacherous deeds of the 4th of December will be remem- 
, bered with horror in the annals even of that city which witnessed the mas- 

sacre of St. Bartholomew and the Reign of Terror. ’— Times, Dec. 8, 1851. 

Page 207. ‘in the Cathedral of our Lady of Paris.’—I have thought fit 
to speak of the deeds which are the subject of this chapter, without, in gen- 
eral, undertaking to judge and formally say whether they were pardonable, 
or wicked, or good; for it seemed to me that there was a native expressive- 
ness in the facts which would enable them, as it were, to speak for them- 
selves without the interpreter’s help. But at a time when these things were 
fresh in men’s minds, no such cold abstinence as: mine was to be expected 
from the periodical press of a free country. After the events of the 2nd of 
December, it became the peculiar duty of the conductors of those journals 
which are published at intervals giving time for full investigation and for 
the formation of a deliberate judgment, not only to make a careful gather- 
ing of the facts-which had been happening on the other side of the Channel, 
but also to pronounce upon the men who had just been stifling France the 
judgment of a nation still blessed with the power of free speech. It was in 
no doubtful, balancing words that this duty was fulfilled. Of the knowl- 

‘edge with which the ‘ Edinburgh Review’ was soon able to arm itself, and 
of the unshrinking firmness with which it delivered its judgment, some sam- 
ples have been given in foregoing notes. ‘The ‘ Quarterly Review’ summed 
up its account of the things done to France in these words :—‘ All the in- 
‘stitutions of the country overthrown—all constitutional authority dissolved 
‘all legality abrogated—the streets of Paris a human slaughter-house— 


638 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


‘innocent strollers and spectators on public walks and from drawing-room 
‘windows wantonly massacred—hundreds of the most honorable and emi- 
‘nent men of the nation imprisoned like felons, some of them handcutfed— 
‘thirty-three departments in a state of siege—and, as the Bonapartist advo- 
‘cates are forward to admit, half the surface cf the country reeking with 
‘blood and fire! . . . All the mischief, whatever it may be, is chargeable 
‘to no other cause but Louis Napoleon’s perjury to the Constitution, and 
‘his treason to the State.’—‘ Quarterly Review’ for December, 1851. 

Page 231. ‘the Sultan was placed in a state of war with the Emperor of 
* Russia.’—A writer in the ‘ Edinburgh Review’ imagined that the state of 
war began on the 4th of October—the date of the Declaration (‘ Edinburgh 
‘Review,’ No. 240, p. 328); but that is a mistake. It was Lord Stratford 
who devised the plan of a contingent declaration of war (‘ Eastern Papers,’ 
part ii. p. 198); and he, of all men living, would be the least likely to be 
wrong as to the time when the state of war began. Reporting to the Home 
Government the effect of the decision of the Great Council as conveyed to 
him by Reshid Pasha, Lord Stratford writes, that ‘Omar Pasha will be 
‘instructed to re-summon Prince Gortschakoff by letter to evacuate the 
‘Principalities within fifteen days from the receipt of his letter; that the 
‘ Prince’s refusal will be considered as tantamount to a declaration of war on the 
‘part of Russia; that hostilities will be declared thereupon by the Porte; that 
‘all persons now here in the employment of Russia will then be requested 
‘to withdraw ; and, finally, that all merchant vessels under Russian colors 
‘will also be required to leave the port of Constantinople.’-—(‘ Eastern 
‘ Papers,’ part ii. p. 151.) After the 4th of October, and at a time when 
the Edinburgh Reviewer supposed the state of war to have begun, the ‘Turk- 
ish Government was sending to Prince Gortschakoff the summons devised 
by Lord Stratford—a summons which the Sublime Porte described as ‘the 
‘last expression of its pacific sentiments.’—(Ibid. p. 154.) The Edinburgh 
Reviewer was kept in his error by a notion that the postponement of hostili- 
ties applied only to ‘hostilities on the Danube ;’ but if he had glanced at 
Lord Stratford’s dispatch of the 21st of October, he would have seen that— 
not only on the Danube, but—on the Asiatic frontiers the attack was to be 
‘immediately after the expiration of the fifteen days. —(Ibid. p. 198.) At 
one time the Turkish Ministers set up a theory that, as Prince Gortscha- 
koff’s answer (dated the 10th of October) was virtually a refusal, the term 
offered by the summons was brought to a close on that day—the 10th (ibid. 
p- 198); but the very fact that they were discussing with Lord Stratford this 
question about the state of war beginning on the 10th, shows conclusively 
that neither they nor Lord Stratford had any notion of its having begun, 
as the Edinburgh Reviewer supposed, on the 4th of October. 

Page 238. Instead of note 1, the following :—‘ Eastern Papers,’ part ii. 
p- 114. In the opinion of Lord Stratford, this violent and inevitably per- 
turbing measure was unnecessary. After saying that he had been content 
with the plan of calling up three steamers from each of the squadrons, he 
writes :—‘ I am still of opinion that assistance thus limited would have an- 
‘swered every purpose, unless, indeed, the Ottoman squadron had taken 
‘part against the Sultan, which was a very extreme case to suppose. J 
‘wished to save Her Majesty’s Government from any embarrassments likely to 
‘accrue from a premature passage of the Dardanelles by Admiral Dundas’s . 
‘squadron, and at the same time to take precautions adequate to the ap- 
‘pearance of danger. I did not form my opinion in this respect without 
‘taking the opinion of Her Majesty’s senior officer in command in the 
‘Bosphorus.’—Ibid. p. 188. 

Page 245. ‘ He resigned his office..—This statement was formally denied 


NOTES TO FOURTIL EDITION. 639 


by a respectable journal; but it may be verified by any one who has an op- 
portunity either of addressing a question to some surviving member of Lord 
Aberdeen’s Cabinet, or of consulting Hansard’s debates. After speaking of 
the resignation of Lord Palmerston, and calling it ‘the resignation of my 
‘noble friend the Secretary of the Home Department,’ Lord Aberdeen, 
the then Prime Minister, went on to say, ‘I myself informed Her Majesty 
‘of the resignation at Osborne.’—‘ Hansard,’ vol. cxcvi. pp. 93, 94. 

Page 248. To note 2 the author adds:—That which, in the above note, 
I treated as a fair inference from the dates, is now a proved truth; for the 
evidences which establish it have been brought to light and given to the pub- 
lic by a writer in the ‘ North British Review’ of April, 1863. At the time 
in question, the Morning Post was Lord Palmerston’s known organ. Com- 
bating the assertion that Lord Palmerston’s dislike to a large measure 
of Reform was the cause of his resignation, his journal said:—‘ We are 
‘convinced that Lord Palmerston has not approved of the sluggish policy 
‘pursued in the Eastern question.” — Morning Post, 19th December, 
1853. On announcing his resumption of office, the same journal said :— 
‘The present Ministerial crisis is therefore at an end. ‘The vacillating 
‘policy pursued in the East is abandoned.’—Ibid., 26th December, 1853. 
The truth stands thus:—Before the time when Lord Aberdeen’s Govern- 
ment was called upon to deal with the state of things brought about by the 
disaster of Sinope, the discussions in the Cabinet on the subject of a new 
Reform Bill had elicited so strong a difference of opinion between Lord 
Palmerston and the majority of the Cabinet, that, whenever the time might 
come for decisive action upon that subject, or even for a formal and final 
decision, Lord Palmerston’s resignation was to be expected; but, as Lord 
Aberdeen said, the ‘ provisions of the measure had not been finally settled,’ 
and therefore the moment which might necessitate Lord Palmerston’s resig- 
nation had not yet come, when, on Monday the 12th of December, the news 
of Sinope reached London. Of course a Cabinet was forthwith summoned. 
It met on Wednesday the 14th of December, but rose from its sitting without 
having agreed to meet the disaster of Sinope by the adoption of any new 
and hostile measure. Lord Palmerston instantly resigned ; but knowing, 
of course, that it would be inconvenient to disclose to Europe prematurely a 
difference of opinion between public men on what was hardly less than a 
question of Peace or War, he took up the heretofore suspended question 
of Reform, and put forward his difference of opinion on that subject as the 
ground of his resignation. There was nothing in this which he would be 
likely to think wrong, for his difference of opinion on Reform was a real 
one, acknowledged to be broad enough to warrant his resignation; and, as 
the moment when he might choose to give full effect to this difference of 
opinion had remained undefined, there was nothing to prevent him from 
fixing upon Wednesday evening the 14th of December as well as any other 
time ; but as he had then just come from the Cabinet which had been de- 
liberating upon the news from Sinope, withont consenting to adopt in con- 
sequence any fresh measure of hostility to Russia, no one having any knowl- 
edge about Lord Palmerston would doubt that the inert way in which the 
Cabinet of the 14th sought to deal with the disaster of Sinope, and the 
instant resignation which followed, were in the relation of cause and effect. 
It does not follow that, in any unworthy sense, ‘Reform’ was a mere pre- 
text: it was a ground—an apparently sufficing ground for resignation at 
any convenient time; but the reason why Lord Palmerston’s resignation 
went in on that particular Wednesday evening, or on the following morning, 
was the way in which the Cabinet had just been dealing with the disaster 
of Sinope, 


640 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Perhaps a statement of the facts and the dates in a tabular form will 
make their significance yet more clear :— 


Monday ‘the 12ths. 20. oc. tee snes ote putea ea pie 5 
Wednesday afternoon, the 14th...... mieiebs 
The evening of the same Wednes- 

day, or on the following morning 
Thursday the 15th........ HEAR sane an dirt 


Priday the: L6thic.. dis -eisve sis ss ay vlee 8s clalete's 
Bavurday Woe iite.s sacle vice cs snice ees ae ote 


Supaday, Thaw Sth .%cias boicaue vowels Siaisieleisias 
Tuesday the 20th... ....cccrccoses 


eeeeeersoseeeesseetseces 


Thursday the 22nd... 


PAtuEdsy, the ZAUN sca .toe 5 otis ciestismmotsies 


Pame Gays... tele u tases Seu wis <ivor’systeieiew ince “ 
Monday the 26th.....0cc..sescccscccsecece 


The news of Sinope reaches London. 
The Cabinet sits. 


Lord Palmerston sends in his resignation, 


Lord Aberdeen announces Lord Palmerston’s 
resignation to the Queen at Osborne. 

Lord Palmerston's resignation announced in 
the Times. 

Dispatch from Lord Clarendon to Lord 
Stratford intimating that, notwithstanding 
the disaster of Sinope, ‘no special instruc- 
‘tions as to the manner in which they [the 
* Admirals] should act, appear to be neces- 
“sary.’ 

The Government receive the French propos- 
als. 

The Government on that day had not yield- 
ed to the pressure of the French Govern- 
ment, and was still adhering to its com- 
paratively pacific policy. See Lord Clar- 
endon’s Dispatch to Lord Stratford of that 
day, ‘ Eastern Papers,’ part ii. p. 320. 

The Cabinet meets and yields to the press- 
ure, adopting the French proposals. 

Lord Clarendon writes :—Her Majesty's Gov- 
ernment do not disguise from themselves 
that it [the course then resolved upon] may 
at no distant period involve England and 
France in war with Russia. 

Lord Palmerston withdraws his resignation. 

The Times and the Morning Post announce 
Lord Palmerston’s return to office. 


Page 250.—‘ forced upon the acceptance of Lord Aberdcen’s Cabinet by the 


‘ Emperor of the French.’—Commentators have denied that Lord Aberdeen’s 
Cabinet was pushed from the paths of peace by the urgency of the French 
Government. With proofs of what I have said about this, the volume, I 
think, abounds ; but for those who like to see facts and dates put closely 
together, it may be convenient to glance at the following statement of the 
way in which the lever acted upon England between eee the 20th and 
Saturday the 24th of December :— 


Tuesday, 20th December............+...++. Our Government having just determined 
; that no special instruction to the Admirals 
were necessitated by the disaster of Sinope 
(¢ Eastern Papers,’ part ii. p. 304), and hav- 
ing up to this day resisted the French pro- 
posals, Lord Clarendon is able to write of | 
‘the wnabated desire for peace by which 
‘the British Government will be animated’ 
{i. e., peace between Turkey and Russia], 
to assure Lord Stratford that the course 
which he was ‘taking with a view to the 
‘adoption by the Porte of pacific coun- 
‘sels is in accordance with the wishes of 
‘Her Majesty’s Government as being cal- 
‘culated to prepare the Porte to yive u fae 
‘ vorable reception to the proposals which 
Shave been forwarded from Vienna.’ — 
‘Eastern Papers,’ part ii. p. 320. 

The Government no longer resists the press- 
ure applied (some of the words inflicting 
the pressure are given in the text), and 
adopts the French proposals. : 


Thursday, 22nd December......scesseeeees 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 641 


Saturday, 24th December................... Lord Clarendon announces to Lord Cowley 
the adoption by our Government of the 
French proposals, and adds :—* Her Majes- 
ntys s Government have not hesitated to 
‘adopt’ the course which the honor and 
‘ dignity of the country prescribe; but at 
‘the same time they do not disguise from 
‘themselves that it may at no distant pe- 
‘riod involve England and France in war 
‘with Russia.'—Ibid. pp. 221, 222. 


Thus, in the interval of three clear days between Tuesday the 20th and 
Saturday the 24th, there is a transition from peaceful language, and from 
obviously strong hopes of even ending the then existing war between Tur- 
key and Russia, to a very close prospect of a new war—a war involving 
England and France; and the three days’ interval in which this momentous 
change took place was marked by but one event—by the determination of 
the Cabinet (on Thursday the 22nd) to adopt the French proposals. 

Page 295. ‘and now at length was broken.’ — A writer in one of the 
Reviews said that the state of war did not begin until the declarations of 
the Western Powers were issued ; but that is a mistake. What brought 
the Western Powers into a state of war, was the Czar’s refusal to answer 
the summons; for the moment that refusal was given, it became, in the 
mind of the Western Powers, as enounced by the express words of their 
summons, a constructive declaration of war by Russia. The English sum- 
mons had these words: ‘The British Government, having exhausted all 
‘the efforts of negotiation, is compelled to declare to the Cabinet of St. 
‘Petersburg, that if . . . [see the summons at length in-the Appendix] 
‘the British Government consider the refusal or the silence of the Cabinet 
“of St. Petersburg as equivalent to a declaration of war.’ —‘ Eastern Pa- 
‘pers,’ part vii. p. 61. 

Page 305. ‘slaughter of the Turks at Sinope.’—So far as concerns Count 
Mensdorf’s personal presence in the Cathedral, this is a mistake, for he 
was absent on leave, and in an almost dying state. Austria’s ‘shameful 
‘presence’ at the ‘Te Deum’ was in the person of her Secretary of Le- 
gation. 

Page 306. ‘will long be remembered against her.’ —So far as concerns 
Colonel Rochow’s personal presence in the Cathedral, this is a mistake, 
for he was absent on leave. Prussia’s ‘shameful presence’ at the ‘ Te 
‘Deum’ was in the person of her Secretary of Legation. 

Page 308. ‘baffled by the prostrations of his French colleague.’ — For 
those who have not had ample means of becoming acquainted with the 
doubleness which characterizes the French Emperor’s habits of action, it 
will be hard to believe in the extent to which his Envoy at St. Petersburg 
was suffered to carry his adulation of the Czar. At the very time when 
the French Emperor was pushing our Government into the adoption of a 
measure of vengeance barely short of flagrant war, his Envoy, M. Castel- 
bajac, though he could not actually attend the public thanksgivings for 
Sinope in the Cathedral, did nevertheless permit himself to wait on the 
Chancellor, Count Nesselrode, and tender his congratulations for the 
slaughter of the Turks at Sinope, and the sinking of their ships. It is be- 
lieved that he expressly desired to tender these his congratulations to the 
Czar ‘as a Christian, a soldier, and a gentleman.’ 

Page 316. ‘he entered the military profession.’ — That is, in an active 
Way, as an officer serving with troops. It must not be inferred from the 
words in the text, that in the interval between September, 1835, and No- 
vember, 1836, his name was (for the second time) out of the Army List. 


642 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


He seems to have been employed at that eae in the ‘Gymnase Militaire’ 
(‘Lettres du Maréchal de St. Arnaud,’ vol. i. p. 92). Considering that 
he had attained to the rank of a full ieakenney a a French regiment, that 
he had been on General Bugeaud’s Staff and in high favor, and that he 
had been intrusted with duties of an important and delicate nature, it is 
obvious that his removal to such a corps as the ‘ Foreign Legion,’ under 
orders for Africa, with no higher rank than that which he had previously 
held in a French regiment, was a descent —a descent and a change so 
abrupt and decisive as to warrant me in speaking of it as the commence- 
ment of a fresh career. The editor of the ‘ Letters’ speaks of the death of 
M. St. Arnaud’s first wife in terms implying that that was the event which 
caused him to seek for service in Africa (ibid.). It may be easily imagined 
that the grief caused by this event was one of the motives which made him 
long to change his career; but it would seem that other circumstances 
must have contributed to reconcile him to a step which placed him in the 
‘Foreign Legion’ with the mere rank of a lieutenant. 

Page 323. ‘being about to depart for the expedition against Copenhayen.’— 
Lord Fitzroy Somerset was not introduced to Sir Arthur Wellesley until just 
as he was starting for the Peninsula. Sir Arthur Wellesley and Lord Fitz- 
roy Somerset sailed in the same ship, and they worked together at the 
Spanish language. 

Page 349. ‘with some gunboats..—The gunboats were lying in this part 
of the river before Lieutenant Glyn and Prince Leiningen came up, but 
were placed at the disposition of Lieutenant Glyn. It was by land that 
Glyn and the Prince, with their seamen and sappers, traveled to the Turk- 
ish camp. 

Page 349. d dtaea the Russian army from the Turks.’—In stating, and 
Stating truly, that no gunboats came up the Danube, one of the com- 
mentators used language which might seem to throw doubt on the above 
narrative of Lieutenant Glyn’s operations. So proof may be useful. In a 
letter now before me, Lieutenant (now Captain) Glyn writes: ‘He [Omar 
‘ Pasha] immediately threw across a large force, and ordered me to hold 
‘the creek between Slubenzie and the town of Giurgevo with gunboats, 
‘which was done ; otherwise the Russians would have turned the position 
‘of Slobenzie.’ 

Page 376. ‘J believe..—I need hardly say’that the underscoring repre- 
sented by these statistics appears in the original note. 

Page 378. The first break, indicated by asterisks, is thus filled up in the 
fourth edition :—‘ This would be effectually done by the occupation of the 
‘Isthmus of Perekop; and I would suggest to you that, if a sufficient 
‘number of the ‘Turkish army can now be spared for this purpose, it would 
‘be highly important that measures should be taken without delay for 
‘sending an adequate force to that point, and associating with the troops 
‘of the Sultan such English and French officers as would assist, by their 
“advice, in holding permanently the position. With the same object, im- 
‘portant assistance might be rendered by Admiral Dundas, if he has yet 
been able to obtain any vessels of a light draught which would prevent 
‘the passage of Russian troops to the Crimea through the Sea of Azoy.’ 

The second break on the same page is also filled up by the following 
paragraphs :— 

‘I will not, in this dispatch, enter into any consideration of the opera- 
‘tions which it would be desirable to undertake in Circassia or the coast 
‘of Abasia. The reduction of the two remaining fortress:s of Anapa and 
‘Sujak Kaleh would be, next to the taking of Sebastopol, of the greatest 
‘importance, as bearing upon the fortunes of the war; but not only is 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 643 


‘their fall of far less moment than that of Sebastopol, but the capture of 
‘the latter might possibly secure the surrender of the Circassian fortresses. 

‘In the event, however, of delay in undertaking these operations being 
‘inevitable, and the transports being in consequence available for any oth- 
‘er service, I wish you to consider, with his Highness Omar Pasha and 
‘Marshal St. Arnaud, whether some part of the Turkish army might not 
‘be conveyed by steam from Varna, and, by a combined movement with 
‘the forces of General Guyon and Schamyl, so entrap the Russian army in 
‘and around Tiflis as to compel its surrender to superior numbers.’ 

Page 389. ‘ He was a Scotsman, 66 years old.’'—No; only 64, I am told, 
at that time. 

Page 381. ‘ more ready to come into their plans.’—One of the commenta- 
tors—-a commentator in the Tunes newspaper — imagined that this piece 
of counsel was the work of the author’s ‘ingenious’ fancy, and remon- 
strated with him for carrying his love of ridicule to the extreme length of 
putting ‘unmitigated nonsense’ in the mouth of a ‘ gallant and sensible’ 
old soldier like Sir George Brown.— Times newspaper, 9th February, 1863. 
I have only to say that the words attributed to Sir George Brown in the » 
text are copied, without the change of a word, from a written narrative of 
the conference, which was handed to me by cne of the two conferring Gen- 
erals. 

Page 381. ‘did not at al/ govern Lord Raglan’s decision.—All who were 
acquainted with Lord Raglan’s nature will acknowledge, I think, that his 
mind would have refused to harbor, for one instant, the notion submitted 
to him by Sir George Brown—the notion of engaging his army in an im- 
prudent undertaking from an apprehension of finding himself superseded 
in the command by some one less scrupulous and more ready to come into 
the plans of the Government. 

Lord Raglan’s inclination to single ont Sir George Brown as a one man 
to consult with upon affairs of the highest grade of importance did not, I 
think, increase after this conference; and it will be seen that, very soon 
after the battle of the Alma, the desire to take close counsel with Sir 
George Brown had lost its force. 

Page 390. ‘as well as one of the French lighters.’ I believe that the 
merit of making this discovery, and of the irresistible energy by which it 
was carried into effect, belonged to Mr. Roberts, late a Master in the Navy. 
See the forcible exposition of Mr. Roberts’s services, and of his cruelly 
frustrated hopes, in the little work called ‘The Service and the Reward,’ 
by Mr. George John Cayley. 

Page 392. To the note at the bottom, the author adds:—I understood 
that number to be the one officially given ; but according to the Report of 
Dr. Rees, the surgeon of the ‘ Britannia’ (which has been kindly brought to 
my notice by Mr. Robarts, a midshipman at the time of the war on board 
the same ship), the number of deaths from cholera was even greater, amount- 
ing to no less than 139 out of 985. Out of the first 60 cases, 55 died ; and 
of those, 50 were dead within the first 20 hours; two-thirds of the crew were 
ill. 

Page 408. ‘from the summits of the highland district.’—A great body of 
most valuable information respecting the Crimea had been imparted to the 
English public by General (then Colonel) Mackintosh, and the Colonel had 
also addressed important reports on the same subject to the military an- 
thorities. What I intend to indicate in the text is, not that the means of 
knowledge were wanting, but that they had not been extensively taken ad- 
vantage of. 

Page 411. ‘to mark the boundary between the French and the English flo- 


644 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


‘tilla.’—-Captain Mends, Sir Edmund Lyons’s flag-captain, thought proper to 
write a letter to a newspaper on the 18th of March, 1863, saying, ‘ It might 
‘suffice for me simply to say that I remember nothing about a buoy ;’ but 
on the 5th of the following April he did me the honor to address a letter-to 
me, in which he said, ‘It would seem there was a buoy.’—See the corre- 
spondence on the subject i in the Appendix, Note VII. 

Page 413. ‘from all share in the chosen landing-ground.’—See the extract 
from Lord Raglan’s private letter on this subject, which is given in the 
next foot-note. 

Page 413. ‘landing of the British forces should take place..—The con- 
ductors of the Times newspaper took upon themselves to deny the truth of 
my statement about the buoy, and this so confidently, that they permitted 
their print to sum up and say, ‘In short, the whole story is a sick man’s 
‘dream.’ Since this denial was uttered so confidently by a respectable 
newspaper, and was supported (during a period of more than a fortnight) 
by the testimony of Captain Mends, it seems right to give an extract from 
the private letter in which Lord Raglan narrates the facts to the Duke of 
Neweastle :— 


Extract from Lord Raglan’s Narrative of the Landing, addressed as a 
Private Communication to the Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of 
War, and dated ‘Camp above Old Fort Bay, September 18, 1854.’ 

‘The disembarkation of both armies commenced on the morning of the 
$ 14th. 

‘It had been settled that the landing should be effected in Old Fort 
‘Bay, and that a buoy should be placed in the centre of it to mark the 
‘left of the French and the right of the English; but when the ‘‘ Agamem- | 
‘ “non” came upon the buoy at day-light, Sir Edmund Lyons found that the 
‘French naval officer had deposited it on the extreme northern end, and 
‘had thus engrossed the whole of the bay for the operation of his own army. 
‘This occasioned considerable confusion and delay, the English convoy 
‘having followed closely upon the steps of their leader, and got mixed with 
‘the French transports; but Sir Edmund Lyons wisely resolved to make 
‘the best of it, and at once ordered the troops to land in the bay next to 
‘the northward.’ 

I may add that all the many accounts which I have seen of the move- 
ments and counter-movements of the ships and the transports on the early 
morning of the 14th of September tally perfectly with the above statement 
by Lord Raglan. In saying this, I include Captain Mends’s letter to the 
newspaper. See the Appendix. It will be seen that the facts which he 
describes in the fourth and fifth paragraphs of that letter are exactly those 
which would naturally result from the discovery and the change of plan 
which Lord Raglan communicates to the Minister of War. 

I may add that Sir George Brown was on board the ‘ Agamemnon ;’ that 
he was personally cognizant of the change which Lord Raglan described ; 
that many years ago he recorded what occurred in language tallying per- 
fectly with Lord Raglan’s account; and, finally, that he (Sir George 
Brown) is still alive. 

Page 414. ‘the change which had been effected.’—In this number was Cap- 
tain Mends, Sir Edmund Lyons’s flag-captain. See his letter to the news- 
paper in the Appendix. 

Page 418. ‘as to untie or to cut every knot.’—An illustration of this way of 
his (which was supplied to me after the publication of the third edition) will 
be found in the note for page 425, farther on. 

Page 419. ‘was the first to touch the beach..—The question as to which 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 645 


of the English boats was the first to land has excited more interest than it 
apparently deserves ; for the landing did not take place in face of the en- 
emy. Perhaps one of the causes which led men to look at the question 
with something more than mere curiosity, was the surprise of finding that, 
notwithstanding all the charges of want of zeal which had been brought 
against Admiral Dundas, a boat from. his Hagsaip (the ‘ Britannia’) was 
said, after all, to have been the first to land. 

According to one opinion, Captain Dacres, with the gig of the ‘ Sanspa- 
‘ricl,’ was the first to reach the shore; and there are antecedent reasons for 
supposing that this would be likely to be the case; for, besides that Captain 
Dacres was (as the work of that and the four following days showed) an 
officer of great zeal and ability, he had been intrusted with the naval com- 
mand on the beach (he was beach-master), and would of course be anx- 
ious to reach the shore as soon:as possible. It seems that there got to be, 
as it were, a kind of race between the ‘ Britannia’ boat and the gig of the 
‘Sanspariel,’ and a race, too, which was a very close one; for although the 
‘Britannia’ boat, laden with troops, could not match its speed with the 
gig, it had a start just long enough to make up for the superior swiftness 
of its rival. Captain Dacres never doubted that he, with the gig of the 
‘ Sanspariel,’ was the first to land ; but amongst. those who were on board the 
‘ Britannia’ boat (and I speak now of soldiers as well as sailors) the belief 
was that that was the boat which won. 

On both sides the statements are positive, and on one side they are also 
circumstantial. They are also rather interesting ; and I would have given 
them here, if it were not that I am unwilling to place men in an attitude 
of direct conflict with one another upon an unimportant matter of fact. 

If Vesey, with the ‘ Britannia’ boat, was the first to land, Colonel Ly- 
sons of the 23rd Fusileers must have been the first man of the land service 
who touched the shore. If, on the other hand, Dacres, with the gig of the 
‘Sanspariel,’ landed first, Sir George Brown, I think, must have been the 
first English officer of the land service who reached the shore of the 
Crimea. 

Page 420. ‘with the whole strength of his own separate will.’—When it is 
seen that I conceive myself warranted in applying this language to the 
exertions of the navy at the time of the landing, it may be asked whether 
there was not some one man who had the merit of giving a right direction 
to the zeal and energy of the seamen thus toiling on the beach? There 
was. ‘The officer who commanded on the beach was Captain Dacres; and 
I believe one might safely echo .the words of. him who once said to Captain 
Dacres, ‘The 14th of September was your day.’ Both Dundas and Lyons 
were doing all that was right; but, so far as concerns the vast. operation 
going on upon the beach, their wisdom lay in the wise trustfulness with 
which they committed the business to a fit man, and then left him alone, 
undisturbed and unfretted by orders. I believe ‘that during the four days 
and four nights which followed the commencement of the landing, Captain 
Dacres never received any orders from Sir Edmund Lyons. 

Page 425. ‘he rode,’ etec.—General Airey’s duties as Quartermaster-Gen- 
eral made it necessary that his charger should be landed at. the earliest 
possible moment, but I am not quite certain whether he was on horseback 
when this incident occurred. My impression was that he was already in 
his saddle, but according to Colonel Lysons’s recollection, he was on foot. 

Page 425. ‘he rode back to the beach.’--Or rather to the ridge which over- 
looked it, for it was there that Colonel (then Major) Lysons was standing 
with a company of the 23rd Fusileers in extended order. 

Page 425. ‘to give him two companies.’—Only one company, it seems. 


646 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Page 425. ‘ with their oxen and drivers complete.’—After thé publication of 
the third edition, I received from Colonel Lysons a more detailed narrative 
of this incident than is given jn the text. He says: ‘Shortly after land- 
‘ing, Sir George Brown ordered me to extend the company that was with 
‘me along the top of the ridge which overlooked the landing-place. While 
‘there, General Airey came up to me, and, pointing to a line of arabas 
‘which was moving across the plain some way off, asked if I could take 
‘them. I answered, ‘‘ Yes, but Sir George had ordered me to stay where I 
‘** was.” The General (Airey) then began to write on a piece of paper to 
‘ask leave to send me from my post; but on looking up, amd seeing that 
‘the wagons were already far off, he exclaimed, ‘‘ We shall Jose them if 
‘“* vou don’t go at once. I will take the responsibility on myself.’’ So 
‘away I went in skirmishing order. On approaching a hillock, which 
“screened the arabas from our view, I saw the long lances of some Cos- 
‘sacks waving in the air. Fearing they might attack us, I closed my men 
‘to the centre on the march; but as we cleared the top of. the rising 
‘ground, these gentlemen (the Cossacks) galloped off to the arabas, on 
‘which we had gained considerably. A few minutes after I saw the Cos- 
“sacks making the drivers unyoke their bullocks, that they might drive 
‘them away from us. Knowing they would beat me at that game, I de- 
‘sired three old soldiers to fall out of the ranks and fire at the Cossacks. 
‘The first shot fell short. On the second being fired, I saw one of the 
‘Russians jump up from his saddle as though he was hit, . . . and forthwith 
‘the whole party seampered away over the plain. The drivers then came 
‘running to us, and kneeling down and embracing our knees. I made them 
‘yoke their bullocks again, and took the train back and handed them over 
‘to General Airey. On our way back we passed Sir George Brown.’ 

We saw that (supposing the ‘ Britannia’ boat to have been the first to 
touch the beach) Colonel Lysons was the first English soldier who landed 
in the Crimea, and the above incident enabled him also to say not only that 
the first shot fired by our soldiery was fired under his orders, but that the 
first prize taken from the enemy was taken by him—was taken by him in 
derogation of the standstill commands which had been given him by Sir 
George Brown, but in obedience to the boldly-ventured order by which 
General Airey unleashed him. 

Page 435. ‘with a squadron of the 4th Light Dragoons.’—No; only one 
troop. 

Page 487. ‘In one brigade a stronger governance was maintained.’ —I 
ought not to cause it to be understood that in one brigade only this stronger 
governance was maintained. In: General Codrington’s, and probably in 
several other brigades, the discipline was proof against the rage of thirst. 

-Page 440. ‘ this affuir on the Bulganak.’—In speaking of the affair of the 
Bulganak, Lord Raglan’s dispatch says: ‘In the affair of the previous day, 
‘Major-General, the Earl of Cardigan, exhibited the utmost spirit and 
‘coolness, and kept his brigade under perfect command.’—Published Dis- 
patch of the 23rd of September, 1854. ’ 

Page 444. ‘ This hill is the key of the position.’—This assertion was de- 
nied by a commentator in the ‘ Quarterly Review,’ who professed to write 
with military knowledge. It*may therefore be well to give here the follow- 
ing extract from Lord Raglan’s published dispatch: ‘The high pinnacle 
‘and ridge before alluded to was the key of the position, and, consequently, 
‘there the greatest preparations had been made for defense.’—Published 
Dispatch of the 22rd September, 1854. Probably no living man is a better 
judge of what is the true ‘key’ of a position than Sir John Burgoyne. 
Now, I have before me a manuscript in his handwriting, which he wrote-at 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 647 


the time, and while he was still on the banks of the Alma. In that paper 
he says: ‘The high pinnacle and ridge on the right’ [he is speaking of the 
Russian right, and the Kourgane Hill] ‘was the key of the position if at- 
‘tacked in front.’ 

Page 450. To note 1, the author adds:—A commentator in the ‘ Quar- 
‘terly Review’ says, ‘The author ‘mistakes in asserting tha it was armed 
‘with fourteen heavy guns. We believe that its armament consisted of six 
‘or eight, not guns of position, but field-guns and howitzers.’ As to the 
number of the guns, the author relies upon several English observers for the 
supposition that it amounted to fourteen, and upon high Russian authority— 
namely, Prince Gortschakoff himself—for the supposition that the number 
was not less than twelve.—See post. That the two captured guns now at 
Woolwich are guns of position, and not mere field-pieces, as the Quarterly 
Reviewers imagined, will be seen from the following report of a competent 
officer, dated from Woolwich :—‘ The calibres of the guns taken at the Alma 
‘were as follows :— 

‘ Brass shot-gun........ssee08. Tred. diasheitee Ade eas STALIN 4.82 inches. 

PMI IVIRTOE DIC save artis casos sc vccvies tccdescecctecss rts eOS EDs 
‘These calibres indicate, I believe, that the shot-gun was a 24-pounder, and 
‘the howitzer a 32-pounder.’ 

Page 457. To note 1, the author adds :—My justification for saying (in 
the corner of the plan) that it was ‘ untruly stated to have been accepted by 
‘Lord Raglan,’ will be found in succeeding pages. 

Page 463. To note 2, the author adds :—When the Marshal got near, he 
was cheered by the English soldiery. Pleased with the compliment, he lift- 
ed his hat, and said (speaking in English and with only a slight accent)— 
‘Hurrah for Old England!’ 

Page 465. ‘preceded by Norcott.’—In both of the places where it occurs 
in this page, the name of Lawrence should be substituted for that of Nor- 
cott. It was on the flank of the Division that Norcott was moving with the 
left wing of the 2nd Rifle battalion. 

I may here say that I was led into the error of omitting Colonel Law- 
rence’s name in this and in several other places by what I must call the 
erroneous wording of Sir George Brown’s Report to Lord Raglan. I say 
‘erroneous’ because, though Sir George Brown does not, in terms, deny 
that the right wing of the 2nd battalion of Rifles was fighting in front of his 
Division, he suppresses all mention of its achievements, and this in a dis- 
patch which gives a prominent place to the operations of the left wing under 
Major Norcott. In excuse for the error into which I was led by trusting too 
implicitly to Sir George Brown’s Report, I may say that Lord Raglan also 
trusted to it, and was obviously misled by it into the adoption of the same mis-’ 
take; for although we now know that Lawrence and the men of the right 
wing were among the foremost of those who stormed the redoubt, Lord 
Raglan-—seeing no mention of this in Sir George Brown’s Report, and ob- 
serving that Sir George specially spoke of Major Norcott’s wing as taking 
part with the 23rd Regiment in the capture of the redoubt-—-was induced to 
speak of the aid given by Major Norcott and the left wing of the Rifles, 
without speaking at all of the right wing, which was also taking a foremost 
part in the storming of the redoubt, under the orders of Colonel Lawrence. 

Page 466. To the last word of the sentence, ‘Lord Raglan, with his 
‘quick eye, had seen the fault, and sent an order to have it corrected,’ ap- 
pend the following note :— 

I know, from one whose strict and absolute truthfulness makes me as 
sure of what I am saying as if I had myself heard the words, that the late 
Duke of Wellington said of Lord Fitzroy Somerset, ‘By G—d, he has a 


648 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


‘better eye for placing troops than any man I know!’ Allied, perhaps, to 
the faculty which makes a man skillful in placing troops, there is in some 
men that instinctive power which people call ‘ an eye for country.” With 
this also, and in an uncommon degree, Lord Raglan was gifted. 

Page 488. ‘ /t is true that,’ etc.—Here should come these words: ‘ Colonel 
‘Lawrence with the right, and... .’ 

Page 488. ‘had gone into the vineyards in front.—During the march, as 
was shown in a former note, Major Norcott had been on the flank of the 
Division; but when the battle opened, he began to operate in front of Bul- 
ler’s brigade. 

Page 490. ‘it would be ‘* compromised.” ’—Exactly the same pressure had 
just been applied by the French Marshal to Sir De Lacy Evans. In his pub- 
lished letter of the 28th of June, 1855, Evans writes: ‘On the arrival of the 
‘2nd Division in front of the village of Bourliouk, which, having been pre- 
‘pared for conflagration by the Russians, became suddenly for some hundred 
‘yards an impenetrable blaze, Major Claremont came to me in great haste, 
‘to say from the Marshal, that a part of the French army, having ascended 
‘the heights on the south of the river, became threatened by large bodies 
‘of Russians, and might become compromised unless the attention of the 
‘enemy were immediately drawn away by pressing them in our front. Imade 
‘instant dispositions to conform to this wish, sending at the same time, as 
‘was my duty, an officer of my Staff (Colonel Herbert) to Lord Raglan, who 
‘was then a short distance in our rear, for his Lordship’s approval, which 
‘was instantly granted.’ From the recurrence of the word ‘compromised,’ 
and from the coincidence in point of time, one is led to infer that the mes- 
sage given in the text and the message conveyed to Lord Raglan through 
General Evans may have been one and the same.. There is nothing that I. 
know of to interfere with this conclusion, if it be supposed that Major Clare- 
mont was accompanied by a French aid-de-camp, who rode first to General’ 
Evans, and from him to Lord Raglan. 

Page 492. ‘who carried it to the 2nd Division..—My authority for this 
statement is the journal of poor Nolan, now lying before me. ‘There, 
after stating that ‘a general advance was ordered,’ he says: ‘To the 2nd 
‘Division I carried the order myself, and in riding forward with the advanced 
‘brigade had my horse shot under me by a round-shot.’ On the other hand, 
General Evans, I think, conceives that he got his warrant to advance when 
Colonel Herbert returned to him with the message that Lord Raglan granted 
his request to be allowed to accede to the prayer of the French Marshal. And 
again, Colonel Lysons (who was Assistant Adjutant-General of the 2nd Divis- 
ion) stated that he carried the order, and he adds this spirited record of the 
emotion which impressed the fact upon his memory: ‘I could not be mistaken 
‘on this point; I so well remember the excitement I felt as I galloped back 
‘to the 2nd Division, and then went on to the right of the Light Division, 
‘passing the order along the line; and I shall never forget the excited look 
‘ of delight from each face as I repeated the words, ‘‘ The line will advance !”’ 
It is evident that both Nolan’s and Colonel Lysons’s statements are correct ; 
and I conceive that the impression which each of them entertained, as well ” 
as the impression entertained by General Evans, may be reconciled by sup- 
posing that the return of Colonel Herbert to Evans’s side preceded the arri- 
val of the formal orders, and that (either intentionally, or else from some 
mistake) the carriage of the formal order was intrusted to two Staff officers. 

Page 492. ‘and Fitzmayer’s battery of field artillery,’—Fitzmayer com- 
manded both this and Turner’s battery; the Captain of this battery was 
Franklin. 

Page 496. ‘before they could find time to form.’—After speaking of the 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 649 


disposition of the Russian infantry on the banks of the river, Prince Gorts- 
chakoff writes: ‘These arrangements had been taken with a view to the 
‘ unavoidable disorders among the enemy’s lines when crossing the river, and 
‘in order to throw the Allies backward by a violent shock. Orders had 
‘been issued to that effect by Prince Mentschikoff, and severally reported to 
‘the commanding generals under me, and by me.’ 

Page 497. ‘ The Rifles under Norcott..—Should read ‘The Rifles under 
‘Lawrence and Norcott.’ 

Page 498. ‘to cover its advance.’—Both the wings of this Rifle battalion 
had inclined to their left at the time of crossing the river; and it is strictly 
accurate to say that the battalion, taken as a whole, did just what was stated 
in the text. The two wings, however, were not under the same command- 
er, and therefore it may be well to repeat that the right wing—the wing 
under Lawrence—was the wing which had had to advance in front of Cod- 
rington’s brigade. Lawrence found himself so baffled by the smoke of the 
burning village, that he inclined away to his left, leaving Codrington’s front 
uncovered, and got at last to the front of the 19th Regiment. 

Page 498. ‘driving full at the enemy’s stronghold.’—Sir George Brown’s 
omission to cause skirmishers to be thrown out from the regiments of Cod- 
rington’s and Buller’s brigades seems to have been caused by his imagining 
that the necessity of the step would be effectually superseded by the opera- 
tions of the Rifle battalion. The event proved his error; but one would 
have thought that it might have been perceived beforehand ; for, however 
well an independent body of riflemen may be led, and however important a 
share it may be likely to have in governing the result of a battle, there is no 
safe ground for anticipating that its operations will supply the place of skir- 
mishers thrown out from-the formed battalions. Indeed, it may be said that 
the more able and enterprising the leader of an independent body of light- 
infantry men may be, the less his force will be likely to fulfill the peculiar 
duty of companies thrown out from the formed battalions, and kept in close 
relation with them by the link of that obedience which a captain owes to his 
colonel. 

Page 499. ‘ The troops pressed on.’—The author here adds the following 
paragraph :— 

‘And by this time the 2nd battalion of the Rifle brigade 
‘had not only driven the enemy’s riflemen from the inclos- 
“ure, but had already crossed the stream; for Colonel Law- 
‘rence, with the right wing, advancing in front of the 19th 
‘Regiment, had brought his men straight across the river as 
‘though it were only a brook; and Major Norcott, with the 
‘left wing, had stolen over the river higher up, and was 

‘ opening fire on the left bank.’ 


To which he appends this note :—The expression ‘stolen over the stream 
‘higher up,’ is not, in its origin, mine, but Sir George Brown’s. Before the 
88th and 77th Regiments reached the bank of the river, Major Norcott’s left 
wing (then operating in front of those two regiments) inclined to its left for 
the sake of a ford which crossed the river somewhat higher up; and that is 
the reason fcr retaining the statement, though it now stands in a page which 
connects it with a later part of the battle than that in which Sir George 
Brown placed it. Sir George imagined (I have his Report before me) that 
Major Norcott had crossed the stream before the orders came for the advance 
of the Light Division, and I accepted Sir George’s account as accurate in this 
respect ; but I was wrong in doing so. Colonel Norcott writes: ‘At length 


Vor u—L 7 


650 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


‘the line came up, and without a moment’s pause I threw Fyer’s and Errol’s 
‘companies,’ etc. ; and he then goes on to describe his passage of the river. 

Page 500. ‘also more free from the enemy's skirmishers.—Because our 
riflemen, as we saw, were operating in this part of the field. The whole of 
the 2nd battalion of Rifles was operating in the front or left front of Buller’s 
brigade. 

Page 500. ‘appearing on the plain to threaten his loft. ’—The absence of 
Prince Mentschikoff in a distant part of the field was probably the cause of 
the enemy’s want of enterprise in not pressing with any degree of vigor upon 
the open flank of the English army. The only approach to any actual move- 
ment against the flank of the Light Division at the time of its advance from 
the river was one perceived and checked by Major Norcott. Norcott, hav- 
ing crossed the stream, had thrown forward his two right companies toa 
ridge i in advance of the bank, and with his two remaining companies was oc- 
cupying the precincts of a farmstead which offered him a point of appua for 
his left flank. While he was thus posted, he saw some sixty or seventy Cos- 
sacks coming down from the south-east by a road which led to the farm, and 
close following these he perceived the head of a column of infantry. - Nor- 
cott immediately withdrew his two right companies from the ridge, and pre- 
pared to make a stand at the farm. To aid him in this undertaking, he 
requested Captain Colville (who had come into this part of the field with 
one of Colonel Lawrence’s companies) to draw up his men in line across the 
road leading down to the farm. Seeing these preparations for their reception, 
the horsemen, and the column of infantry which had been following them, 
turned about and withdrew. 

Page 501. ‘ Though forming part of Buller’s brigade, the 19th Regiment,’ 
etc.—Having Lawrence on its front with the right wing of the 2nd Rifle 
battalion. 

Page 502. ‘laying stress upon the value of discipline.’—One of the com- 
mentators said that the above account of the career of Sir George Brown from 
1815 to 1854 was inaccurate; but he was wrong. The commentator’s error 
was occasioned—not by any want of knowledge about Sir George Brown’s 
career, but—by misreading hae passage. The account given in the text is 
right as it stands. 

Page 504. ‘ sudden apparition of the flowing plumes.’ —Instead of ‘the flow- 
‘ing plumes,’ I ought to have been content to say ‘the hat;’ for, adopting 
the evidently authentic information on this subject which was obtained by 
the conductors of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ I have come to the conclusion 
that, at this time, Sir George Brown’s hat was without its plumes. 

Page 505. Instead of note 1, the following :—He had come out in com- 
mand of the Ist battalion of the Coldstream; but the brevet of the 20th of 
June (which reached him at Varna in the following month) deprived him 
for the time of all military occupation by raising him to the rank of Major- 
General. Greatly distressed by a change which seemed to rob him of his 
opportunity of seeing active service before the enemy, General Codrington 
pressed to be allowed to remain serving with the army in any capacity; but 
the opportunity of granting his prayer did not occur until nearly two months 
afterward, and during the interval he was without any military occupation, 
so he traveled in the country of the Balkan. On the Ist of September he 
was appointed to the command he now held—the command of the Ist bri- 
gade of the Light Division. 

Page 507. ‘had come to the East a mere traveler.,—See the correction in 
the preceding note for p. 505. 

Page 509. ‘ line which was formed by the 19th Regiment,’ ete.—Having Law- 
rence’s Rifles on its front. 


NOTES.TO FOURTH EDITION. 6514 


Page 509. ‘which was solemnly marching against them.’—The column, it 
seems, was also under a flanking fire poured into it by some of the riflemen 
whom Major Norcott had posted at the farmstead on the extreme left of the 
English line. 

Page 510. ‘ Then the 19th.’— With Lawrence’s Rifles in front of it. Ma- 
jor Norcott’s two right companies were extended along the ridge above the 
river’s bank, and were lying down, when Colonel Lawrence, advancing in 
person with his wing of the Rifle battalion, rode through them. It was 
through a part of Fyers’s company that Colonel Lawrence rode. 

Page 511. ‘no less than his flowing plumes.’—Instead of ‘his flowing 

‘plumes,’ I should have been content to say ‘ his general’s hat.’ 
- Page 515. Instead of note 1, the following :—It almost always happens 
that incidents occurring in a battle are told by the most truthful by-standers 
with differences more or less wide. One of the eye-witnesses of the above- 
mentioned incident,. whose impressions wear all the appearance of being 
accurate, has given me the following account of it: Young Anstruther, he 
says, rushed forward just as is mentioned in the text, and being shot dead, 
he fell clasping the color in the way above described ; but the spot of ground 
where he fell was short of the redoubt by some thirty or forty yards. At 
the moment when Anstruther fell, Sergeant Luke O’Connor (the centre 
sergeant), who had been keeping close up with the color, was also struck 
down by a shot which wounded him in the breast. Then, as is told in the 
text, William Evans gathered up the color, but in the next moment Ser- 
geant Luke O’Connor became aware that, bad as his wound was, it would 
not prevent him from springing to his feet. So rising up quickly, he as- 
serted his right as sergeant to the honor of carrying the color. He accord- 
ingly received it from the hands of William Evans, carried it up to the 
breastwork, and planted it on the parapet, laying claim to the Great Re- 
doubt on behalf of the Royal Welsh. And after this, notwithstanding his 
wound, O’Connor persisted in refusing to part with the honor of carrying 
the color. Lieutenant Granville, and also, I think, some other officers of 
the regiment, observed that O’Connor was growing weak from the effect 
of his wound, and pressed him to go to the rear; but, setting at naught all 
these counsels, O’Connor persisted in his determination to carry the cher- 
ished standard until the close of the battle. He received the thanks of Sir 
George Brown and General Codrington on the field ; and, for having done 
what is above told, he was decorated with the Victoria Cross. He was also 
promoted. He is now a captain in that same devoted regiment with which 
he had the glory of serving on the day of the Alma. 

Page 515. ‘more followed..—Among the foremost of these was Major 
Norcott with some of his riflemen. After the moment when Colonel Law- 
rence with his wing pushed forward through Major Norcott’s right com- 
panies, Major Norcott moved so far westward that he entered the redoubt— 
not, as might have been expected, at its (proper) left shoulder, but toward 
_itsright. The effect of the movements made by these two wings of the Rifle 
battalion was, that their respective positions were in a manner reversed ; 
for when the redoubt was seized, the right wing of the Rifle battalion was 
heading the extreme left of the storming force ; and, on the other hand, the 
left wing had inclined a good way to the right. 

Page 515. ‘At the same instant Norcott’s riflemen.’—‘ Lawrence’s riflemen’ 
should here be substituted for ‘ Norcott’s.’ Both Lawrence and Ross, his 
adjutant, were dismounted when within a few yards of the work by a dis- 
charge of grape—grape discharged from the field-battery on the higher slope 
of the Kourgané Hill. Lawrence rolled almost under the breastwork. 

It may be remembered that, in the published dispatch, Lord Raglan 


652 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


spoke of the capture of the redoubt as an operation ‘ materially aided by 
‘the advance of four companies of the Rifle brigade under Major Norcott, 
‘who promises to be a distinguished officer of light troops.’ ‘The omission of 
Colonel Lawrence’s name in a dispatch containing that sentence, was obvi- 
ously occasioned by what (in the sense indicated in a former note) I have 
ventured to call the ‘ erroneous wording’ of Sir George Brown’s Report to 
Lord Raglan. My omission of Colonel Lawrence’s name in the text was 
brought about by the same cause. 

Page 515. ‘ This was a brass 24-pound howitzer.’—It appears by a former 
note that the calibre of this howitzer is 6.12—a calibre which indicates, I 
believe, a 32-pounder. 

Page 516. ‘ Colonel Chester . . . had been killed.’—No; it was some min- 
utes later that Colonel Chester fell. 

Page 516. ‘four battalions, and a wing.’ Instead of ‘a wing’ read ‘the 
whole.’ 

Page 520. ‘by advancing in conformity with its movements.’—At this mo- 
ment the Duke of Cambridge rode up, and to him Airey repeated it to be 
Lord Raglan’s meaning that the Division should instantly ‘push on.’ 
H.R.H. then gave orders for the immediate advance of the Division, and 
Clifton, I think, was the aid-de-camp who carried the order to Sir Colin 
Campbell. ’ 

Page 520. ‘conveying his opinion to the Duke of Cambridge.’—Evans sent 
the message by Colonel Steele, who chanced to be near him at the time. 
Steele.was Military Secretary, and he seems to have fulfilled his mission in 
a way which caused it to be understood that the message he brought was an- 
order from Lord Raglan. 

Page 520. To the sentence in which it is stated that General Evans, com- ~ 
‘prehending at once that the advance of Codrington’s brigade was a move- 
‘ment requiring instant support, took upon himself to send a message convey- 
‘ing his opinion to the Duke of Cambridge,’ append the following note :— 

In reference to the above statement, the conductors of one of the Reviews 
deemed it fitting and wise to profess to know the limit of what was remem- 
bered upon this subject by H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge ; for in the num- 
ber of their journal which appeared in the beginning of April, they ventured 
upon the following assertion: ‘The Duke of Cambridge and his Staff have 
‘no recollection of the receipt of these orders.’ But only a few hours later, 
General Evans, in a letter of the 3rd of April addressed by him to one of the 
newspapers, not only contradicted the contradiction hazarded by the ‘ Re- 
view,’ but stated that on the 9th of February (and therefore several weeks 
before the publication of the Review) His Royal Highness had ‘frankly’ and 
‘repeatedly’ acknowledged the facts. After citing the words of the Review, 
General Evans writes :—‘ Herein there is a mistake. The Duke of Cam- 
‘bridge and his Staff did forget, it is true, all about this matter until my 
‘reply of February 7th reached him. His Royal Highness’s rejoinder of 
‘February 9th very frankly (and I may say repeatedly) acknowledges the 
‘facts: ‘‘I have a perfect recollection,” he says, ‘‘ of Colonel Steele coming 
“tome,” ete. ‘ Your explanation clears up that point.” ‘I see nothing 
‘*“very particular in this incident, only I could not recollect the fact.” 
‘Again, on the 14th, His Royal Highness says: ‘*‘ My only object was to 
‘“ clear up a mystery which Mr. Kinglake’s book had raised in my mind 
‘“fas to a message being sent to me by you, of which I had no recollection 
‘“*whatever, but which vour letter fully explained.” ’ 

Page 527. After the conclusion of the paragraph in the middle of which 
this page commences, the author adds another (not in the first edition), as 
follows :— 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 653 


His (Sir Colin Campbell’s) brigade at this time was not 
under a heavy fire, and he effected the operation of passing 
the river very simply; for, without attempting formal evolu- 
tions, each of his regiments, while it advanced, tried to keep 
up, as well as the nature of the ground would allow, the 
rudiments of its line-formation ; and when it gained the op- 
_ posite bank, its array was carefully restored. As soon as 
one of the regiments was duly iormed on the Russian side 
of the river, it was moved forward; and since the ground 
presented more obstacles toward our left than toward our 
right, the brigade fell naturally, and without design, into 
direct échelon of regiments. The 42nd was in advance; on 
the left of that regiment there was the 93rd, somewhat re- 
fused ; and on the left of the 93rd, but still farther refused, 
there came the 79th. 


Page 528. 'l’o note 1, the author adds :—Experience has shown that by 
the use of glasses, and by a judicious use of the eyes of other men, an officer 
may do much to compensate for the defect of near-sightedness ; and of the 
truth of this, both General Codrington and General Buller were -instances 
more or less strong. But when near-sightedness is combined with an un- 
consciousness of the defect, it of course becomes very dangerous. People 
who served in the Light Division will smile at the idea of my taking the 
trouble to prove that which every body knew—namely, that’ Sir George 
Brown was extremely near-sighted ; but the fact has been gravely contra- 
dicted by a commentator in the Quarterly Review who wrote under the in- 
structions of Sir George Brown himself, and it does not always do to at- 
tempt to establish a truth by speaking of it as ‘notorious ;’ so perhaps a 
succinct proof may be useful. I[ can give it thus:—We know that in the 
gorge or opening through which the great road runs, Evans was operating 
with Pennefather’s brigade and the 47th Regiment; and he was there en- 
gaged in so hard a struggle that Pennefather’s brigade lost a fourth of its 
strength. Yet incredible as it may seem, Sir George Brown imagined that 
he, with his right brigade, was in the occupation of the whole of that ground. 
In the Report, in his own handwriting, now lying before me, he writes :— 
‘My Ist brigade itself completely filled the whole mouth of the gorge or valley 
‘ through which the road runs.’ Obviously, the cause of this extraordinary 
misstatement by Sir George Brown was near-sightedness—near-sightedness 
combined with so imperfect a consciousness of the defect as to cause him to 
rely with undue confidence on his own uncorrected impressions. 

Page 533. ‘began to sound the ‘‘ cease firing.’’’—At this moment—for so 
an eye-witness tells me—Colonel Chester was still living. He was sitting in 
his saddle close to the redoubt, and when he saw the soldiery beginning to 
catch the belief that the approaching column was French, he eagerly strove 
to undeceive them. Enforcing his words by gesture, he was impatiently 
moving his uplifted sword, as though he would say to those who might sce 
without being able to hear, ‘No! no! nonsense! the column is not French— 
‘it is an enemy’s column. Fire into it! fire into it!’ While he was thus 
speaking, and thus making signs to his people, he was struck first by one 
shot, and then almost instantly by another. Upon recciving the first shot, 
he seemed to put his hand to the wound, but when the second shot struck 
him he dropped from his horse and fell dead. 


654 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


Page 537. ‘formed line, and advanced.’—But it seems in an imperfect 
way, for the advance was urgently hurried. The left-flank company. had 
got separated, and from that circumstance it escaped the confusion which 
involved the main body. 

Page 537. ‘broke through the left companies of the Scots Fusileers.’—Thar 
is to say, through the left companies of the main body. ‘The left-flank 
company, as before mentioned, had got separated. 

A commentator in the Quarterly Review, who had suffered himself to 
receive, in an indiscriminate way, the impressions of Sir George Brown, 
said I was ‘wrong in having asserted that the Fusileers, in their tumultu- 
‘ous advance, encountered a heap of our men running away from the re- 
‘doubt. The fugitives from the redoubt were clean out of the way when the 
‘Fusileer Guards pushed forward.’ 

Is there any truth—any semblance of truth—in this denial? We will 
see. 

General Bentinck, who was personally present with the Fusileer Guards 
when they began their advance, wrote in his Report the day next after the 
battle: ‘The intrenchment partially won by the Light Division was lost, 
‘and at the moment some confusion was occasioned by the regiment obliged to 
‘abandon it retiring through the Scots Fusileer Guards, and thereby putting 
‘ their left wing out of line. The battalion retired for a short time, re-formed, 
‘and returned to its post. In this partial movement to the rear, a severe 
‘loss was sustained by the Scots Fusileer Guards.’—Holograph Report by 
General Bentinck. Colonel (now General) Ridley commanded one of the 
wings of the Fusileer Guards, and he has orally confirmed to me the truth 
of the statement. 

Colonel Percy commanded the left-flank company of the Grenadiers, and 
was therefore so placed as to be able to see what happened to the Fusileer 
Guards. He writes: —‘The repulsed regiment came down violent/y upon them 
‘and broke their line. If the Russians alone had come down upon them, 
‘they would have been received with the bayonets.’ 

Captain Annesley, an officer of the Fusileer Guards, two days after the 
battle, made this entry in his journal :—‘ Then the 23rd came down in one 
‘mass right on top of our line. Their disorder was caused by the Colonel 
‘and both Majors being killed, and no one knowing who to look to for or- 
‘ders. However it was, they swept half my company clean away, and a great 
‘many of the next one to it,’—Extracted from the original MS, 

Of the officers of the Fusileer Guards with whom I have conversed on the 
subject, the one who was the least impressed with the extent of the confusion 
thus wrought was Lord Listowel; but it is only in regard to the extent of 
the mischief that he differs from the other eye-witnesses. I hear that Col- 
onel Sir Charles Hamilton (who commanded the battalion), Colonel Joce- 
lyn, Colonel Francis Seymour, and others, all agree in stating that the line 
of the Fusileer Guards was broken by the bodily pressure of the retreating 
troops of the Light Division. With the exception of Sir George Brown, I 
do not remember to have heard of any one present at the battle who held a 
contrary belief. 

Page 537. ‘and destroyed their formation.’—For the battalion was hurry- 
ing forward so impatiently as to be unable to open its ranks in the usual 
way. 

Page 537. ‘and got his ribs fractured.’—I have heard that this man’s 
name was Hesketh. 

Page 538. ‘12 sergeants were wounded.’—Colonel Webber Smith also 
(whose name was omitted by mistake in the text) received two gunshot 
wounds, and a hardish contusion besides. 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 655 


Page 538. ‘most of those casualties occurred in: the left wing.—I am not 
sure that that was the case. Ihave not before me the materials for showing 
the proportions in which the two wings suffered. 

Page 538. ‘the four companies of Rifles.’—Instead of ‘the four compa- 
‘nies of Rifles,’ read ‘the battalion of Rifles.’ 

Page 562. To note 2, the author adds :—While the 55th was approach- 
ing the Alma, General Pennefather wished to form line ; but after forming 
two or three groups which were immediately struck down by the enemy’s 
shot, Pennefather allowed the 55th Regiment to follow Colonel Warren. 
Colonel Warren instantly crossed the river, and formed the regiment in 
line under cover of a spur or rising ground at the base of the hills. When 
the line had been formed, it moved forward, General Pennefather leading 
in front. At that time the line of the 55th was parallel with the river. 

Page 564. ‘these battalions were ‘* Fusileers.”’ ’"—The English MS. transla- 
tion from the Russian original on which I founded this statement, spoke of 
the Kazan battalions as ‘ Fusileers;’ but I believe that this was an error, 
and that the-word should have been translated ‘ Chasseurs.’ 

Page 568. ‘lead it on to a charge with the bayonet.’—This statement is 
founded, as will be seen below, upon a narrative written by Prince Gorts- 
chakoff himself; but it interested me to hear, as I lately did from an officer 
in the 7th Fusileers, a statement coinciding exactly (so far as it goes) with 
the Prince’s narrative. Sir Thomas Troubridge, who was the Major com- 
manding the right wing of the 7th Fusileers, told me he remembers that 
after the fight between the column and the 7th Fusileers had been going on 
a long time, he saw a horseman, with some mounted followers—evidently, 
as he conceived, a General and his Staff—ride down and join the column, 

Page 568. To note 1, the author adds:—When Prince Gortschakoff had 
ridden off, the column was subjected, as I now know, to this farther stress: 
Colonel Warren with the 55th extended in line—a regiment belonging to 
Evans’s Division—was advancing up the Pass when he saw on his left front 
the column which was engaged with the 7th Fusileers. Colonel Warren 
instantly caused his regiment to bring forward their right shoulders, and in 
fact to wheel upon their centre, very much as a company wheels. ‘This 
manceuvre was performed under fire from the column, and the change of 
front was carried to the length of bringing the battalion into a line almost 
perpendicular to the line of its former front, and almost parallel with the 
flanks of the Russian column. When the manceuvre was complete, the 55th 
opened fire upon the flank of the Russian column. 

Page 569. ‘the column began to fall back.’—It seems that, at the mo- 
ment when the discomfiture of the column became evident, the BBth received 
orders (probably from General Pennefather) to ‘cease firing and charge.’ 
Thereupon the officers went forward in tront, ‘stopping the firing,’ and 
meanwhile the column gliding off, and afterward betaking itself to a more 
rapid retreat, escaped a good deal of the slaughter which would have been 
inflicted upon it if the fire of the 55th had not been stayed by the order to 
charge. 

Page 569. ‘and Hare,’ etc.—Hare died of his wounds a few hours after 
the battle. 

Page 569. ‘and Jones, were wounded.’—Add to this list of wounded, 
Lieutenant Hibberd and Adjutant Hobson. 

Page 570. To note 1, the author adds:—It has been declared that no 
such fight as is above described took place; that the 7th Fusileers was. not 
separately engaged with any Russian column on the day of the Alma; and 
that, far from maintaining, and maintaining victoriously, the struggle which 
I have described, this 7th Fusileers fell back in the midst of the fight, re- 


656 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


treating through the Grenadier Guards. This notion has been propounded 
—not by a common gatherer of the many contradictory stories which bat- 
tles are apt to breed, but—by General Sir George Brown, the officer com- 
manding the Division to which the 7th Fusileers belonged. Under these 
circumstances, I have thought it right to give in the Appendix (Note VIII. ), 
first, a copy of the statement on this subject which is understood to be 
based on Sir George Brown's instructions, and then the series of proofs by 
which I undertake to refute it. J 

Page 572. ‘got into disorder, and fell back.’—But the immediate cause 
which brought about the retreat of this small and disordered body of men 
was, “ifter all, the word of command. See the more detailed account given 
in the Appendix, Note IX. The state of increased disorder into which the 
battalion fell was not before, but after the delivery of the command to re- 
tire. The retreat of the Fusileer Guards was pressed, but not with great 
vigor, by Russian skirmishers pushing forward in advance of the Vladimir 
column ; and the column itself was tempted, as it were, by the movement 
of retreat, to come down below the redoubt, and advance in pursuit. Col- 
onel Hood, who was on the immediate right of the Fusileer Guards, speaks 
of them as ‘beaten back, and pursued.’—Private letter, 21st September, 
1854. 

Page 572. ‘was in confusion near the bank of the river.—The main part 
of the battalion was rallied upon ground just in advance of the road which 
runs parallel with the bank of the river. Judging from the French map, 
this road would seem to be about 150 yards above the water’s edge; and 
that space, therefore, would about represent the distance between the river 
and the ground on which the main part of the battalion was rallied. 

In this note I have ventured to say that the main part of the battalion of 
the Fusileer Guards was rallied in advance of the road running parallel with 
the river. The Quarterly Review, however, in an article written with the 
aid of instructions from Sir George Brown, has made the following state- 
ment :—‘ The men of the Light Division who had been driven out of the 
‘Redan were /ying in an irregular line with the Fusileer Guards under the 
‘bank.’ ‘That, for some little time after the check they had sustained, 
many of the men of the Fusileer Guards were lingering about under the 
bank, I have never doubted ; but it is new to me to hear that, taken as a 
whole, the centre battalion of the Guards—the Quarterly Review calls 
the body, simply without subtraction or qualification, ‘the Fusileer Guards’ 
—was content to be deliberately lying down under the bank at this period 
of the battle, and there joining with the light-infantry men in keeping up 
‘a heavy fire upon the space between themselves and the work.’ If this 
passage is an accurate representation of Sir George Brown’s assertion, Sir 
George is at variance with every one of the officers who have spoken to me 
on the subject. Deliberately, and in a careful, detailed way, Colonel (now 
General) Ridley has assured me that, immediately after the check sustained 
by the battalion of the Fusileer Guards, it was rallied and re-formed under 
his own eyes in advance of the road above spoken of, and that thenceforth 
it took part in the advance of the Guards without afterward retreating a 
step, and, of course, without afterward falling back under the bank. Gen- 
eral Ridley’s statement tallies perfectly with the Report which H.R.H. the 
Duke of Cambridge addressed to Head-quarters the day next but one after 
the battle, for the Duke there says that the Fusileer Guards re-formed ‘with 
‘the greatest alacrity.—Holograph MS. Report of the 22nd September, 1854, 
by H.R.H. 

Page 572. ‘inflicted loss upon the Scots Fusileer Guards.’-—Some of the 
officers who were pained by the above account of the operations of the Scots 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 657 


Fusileer Guards, did me the honor to request an interview with me, in or- 
der that they might have an opportunity of submitting to me their view of 
the matter. I was of course most ready to accede to this request, and some 
interviews accordingly took place. With much care we went together 
over the passages in question, discussing them, paragraph by paragraph, 
sentence by sentence, and sometimes almost word by word. The result 
was that, at the close of the discussion, those who had been the most pained 
by the narrative did not at all maintain that any one sentence was wrong, 
but they stated to me many additional facts which they thought it would be 
well for the repute of the regiment to have stated. They, in short, seemed 
to think that an account upon a somewhat larger scale than the one I had 
adopted would put the conduct of the battalion in a better light. I gladly 
acceded to this view, and the 8rd edition gave the new facts which had been 
imparted to me in notes at the foot of the page; but it now occurs to me 
that I shall still better carry out the object in view if, instead of breaking 
up the additional matter into several foot-notes, [ put into a connected form 
the more minute narrative which I am now enabled to give. Accordingly, 
this more minute narrative will be found in the Appendix, Note IX. I 
think it will be found that the difference between the account here appear- 
ing and the account appearing in the Appendix, is a difference resulting 
entirely, or almost entirely, from the difference of the scale. 

Page 572. ‘ When Colonel Hood,’ ete.—Colonel Hood had not failed to 
seize the precious opportunity which was offered to his battalion by the 
sheltering steepness of the bank. In a private letter he writes :—‘ Under 
‘the steep bank of the river, we closed in to our centre; and to this ma- 
“nceuvre our after-success was mainly attributable.’ 

Page 572. ‘and marched forward in beautiful order.,.—‘ We formed in 
‘perfect and compact order on the top of the bank, and then advanced 
‘steadily up the intrenched position.’—Colonel Hood, private letter. 

Page 572. ‘and afterward formed up anew.’—‘ Our 6th and 7th compa- 
‘nies opened out to let them pass, and closed up as coolly as if in Hyde Park.’ 
—Colonel Hood, private letter. 

Page 573. ‘through the worst stress of the jfiyht.—Notwithstanding his 
wound. See ante. 

Page 573. ‘to jill up a part of the chasm.’—Of course it is not intended 
that this word ‘chasm’ (which cecurs in several places) should be taken as 
indicating that the Scots Fusileer Guards were not on the ground, but 
merely that, for the moment, the main body of the battalion had lost its 
formation, and was re-forming upon an alignment very little in rear of that 
on which the Grenadiers were standing. 

Page 573. To note 1, the author adds:—The term ‘ Household Brigade’ 
is so habitually applied to the Household Covalry, that although the three 
battalions of Guards at the Alma were ‘Household’ battalions, and al- 
though they formed a ‘ brigade,’ it would have been better to avoid the ex- 
pression used in the text. 

Page 573. ‘contentedly marched up the slope..—It was in disobedience to 
the contingent orders he had received that Colonel Hood thus advanced with 
the Grenadiers. In his journal he writes :—‘ Last order received by me was 
‘from Captain Fielding, Brigade-Major (when battalion was lying down 
‘under cannonade and shelling)—‘‘ The Brigadier desires you to conform 
“to anv movements on your left.”’ Now the movement on Colonel 
Hood's left, to which, by the words of General Bentinck’s orders, he thus 
found himself told to conform, was the retreat ot the Fusileer Gnards. In 
other words, there had occurred an event which placed Colonel Hood under 
orders to retire. Therefore it was that, immediately after the sentence 


EE 2 


658 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


above quoted, he wrote in his journal these words :—‘ Thank God I dis- 
‘obeyed!!! Advanced steadily in line.’ 

Page 574. ‘Colonel Berkeley came up.’—It seems that Colonel Dalrymple 
was the officer whose name should have here appeared, instead of that of 
Colonel Berkeley, who, it seems, was wounded. Colonel Dalrymple, from 
the first, had kept the right-flank company together, and now, with General 
Bentinck’s sanction, he formed it on the left of the Grenadiers. 

It is still maintained by an eye-witness that the text as it stands is right; 
but if it is true that Berkeley brought up some men of the Scots Fusileers, 
it is certain that Colonel Dalrymple did the like with his company. 

Page 576. After the paragraph ending with the sentence :—‘'Then the 
‘Highlanders marched through, leaving General Buller and his two battal- 
‘jons in their rear,’ the author in the third edition added several new para- 
graphs with notes, which are here transcribed as follows :— 


**The brigade of Guards will be destroyed,’ said one ad- 


‘When the incident now about to be narrated took place, the state of 
things in this part of the field was as follows :—The 88th, while still formed 
in square, was retreating, and the 77th, though extended in line, was also 
falling back. Whilst this was the condition of the troops under Buller, the 
soldiery who had been forced to relinquish the redoubt were spread along 
the lower part of the slope firing powerless shots toward the earth-work. It 
seemed to Sir Colin Campbell that this discomfiture of Sir George Brown’s 
troops was fast involving the fate of the battle, and that it was a thing of 
great need to show, and to show at the very instant, a steady and well- 
formed battalion ranged frank and fair on the slope. With this intent he 
was carrying forward the 42nd, and placing it in advance of the alignment 
which the Coldstream was taking up on his right. ‘The 42nd had just been 
taking ground to its left, and was still in the formation which had been 
resorted to for effecting the change—that is, it was in open column of com- 
panies, ‘right in front,’ and facing westward, but was preparing to wheel 
into line. So far as concerned all this part of the field, the fight was in its 
crisis. The Staff of the 1st Division were near the left, or left front of the 
Coldstream, and not far from the ground where the grenadier company of 
the 42nd stood ranged. It was then that there occurred the incident de- 
scribed in the text. 

An officer of the Coldstream informs me, of what I certainly did not 
know before, namely, that an order ‘to retire’ passed along the line of his 
battalion, and that the buglers, too, sounded ‘the retire.’ With the in- 
formation which I at present possess, I must decline to speak of this order 
as one which came from an authentic source; but that it passed along the 
line in the way above described I am unable to doubt. The order, how- 
ever, was met by the battalion with loud and general cries of ‘No! no! 
—it must be a mistake!’ ‘Retire!—No! no!’ This popular opposition to 
the notion of retiring was probably re-enforced (though I have not vet heard 
the fact stated) by proper orders from the divisional general, for the Duke 
of Cambridge was present in person with this battalion. At all events the 
opposition was completely successful, for the battalion kept its ground, and 
did not, as I believe, make any, the least, movement in retreat. It is true 
that, in his journal, Colonel Hood (who commanded the Grenadier Guards) 
wrote :—‘ Scots Fusileers and Coldstream ! !—retired by command!’ but he 
was mistaken in supposing that the retreating movement which he observed 
on his left extended so far as to include the Coldstream. The Coldstream 
was not advancing at the moment, but it did not retire. 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 659 


viser.; and he asked whether it ought not to fall back a little 
in order to recover its formation { . 

These words were spoken by an officer not holding any 
high rank,” and they owe their whole importance to the 
answer which they elicited and the propulsion which there- 
upon followed. | 

He who answered the question® was a veteran soldier, 
and it was with a deference no less wise than graceful that 
the Duke of Cambridge loved to seek and to follow his 
counsels, 

Whilst Ensign Campbell was passing from boyhood to 
man’s estate, he was made partaker in the great transactions 
which were then beginning to work out the liberation of 
Europe. In the May of 1808 he received his first commis- 
sion—a commission in the 6th Foot ; and a few weeks after- 
ward—then too young to carry the colors—he was serving 
with his regiment upon the heights of Vimieira. There the 
lad saw the turning of a tide in human affairs; saw the 
opening of the mighty strife between ‘ Column’ and ‘ Line ;” 
saw France, long unmatched upon the Continent, retreating 
before British infantry ; saw the first of Napoleon’s stumbles, 
and the fame of Sir Arthur Wellesley beginning to dawn 
over Europe. 

He was in Sir John Moore’s campaign, and at its closing 
scene—Corunna. He was with the Walcheren expedition ; 
and afterward, returning to the Peninsula, he was at the bat- 
tle of Barossa, the defense of Tarifa, the relief of Taragona, 


2 I foresee that what I here.say as to the obscure rank of the officer who 
made this suggestion will be regarded by some as inaccurate; and, indeed, 
I am aware that the belief of those who hold the contrary of this to be true 
is based upon grounds apparently strong. I did not hear the words myself; 
and all I-can say is, that my statement is founded upon authority which 
makes me feel certain that I do rightly in making it; though I also think 
Lam right in saying that I did not myself hear the words. — If my state- 
ment as to the obscure rank of the officer is true, it follows, I think, that I 
am right in not disclosing his name; because (upon that supposition) his 
words had no sort of importance beyond that attributed to them in the text. 

3 He answered the question the moment he heard its purport told to him. 
He had not himself heard it fall from the lips of the officer with whom it 
originated. 

4 In his most interesting and most valuable ‘Life of the Duke of Wel- 
‘lington,’ Mr. Gleig repeats the description of Vimieira, which the Duke 
once gave in his presence at Strathfieldsaye. ‘The Duke’s words are thus 
given by Mr. Gleig:—‘ The French came on, on that occasion, with great 
‘boldness, and seemed to feel their way less than I always found them to 
‘do afterward. They came on,-as usual, in very heavy columns, and | re- 
‘ceived them in line, which they were not accustomed to, and we repulsed 
‘them three several times.’ 


660 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


and the combats at Malaga and Osma. He led a forlorn 
hope at the storming of St. Sebastian, and was there wound- 
ed twice; he was at Vittoria; he was at the passage of the 
Bidassoa; he took part in the American war of 1814; he 
served in the West Indies; he served in the Chinese war of 
1842. These occasions he had so well used that his quality 
as a soldier was perfectly well known. He had been praised 
and praised, again and again; but since he was not so con- 
nected as to be able to move the dispensers of military rank, 
he gained promotion slowly, and it was not until the second 
Sikh war that he had a command as a general: even then he 
had no rank in the army above that of a colonel. At Chili-. 
anwalla he commanded a division. Marching in person with 
one of his two brigades, he had gained the heights on the 
extreme right of the Sikh position, and then bringing round 
the left shoulder, he had rolled up the enemy’s line and won 
the day; but since his other brigade (being separated from 
him by a long distance) had wanted his personal control, and 
fallen into trouble, the brilliancy of the general result which 
he had achieved did not save him altogether from criticism. 
That day he was wounded for the fourth time. He com- 
manded a division at the great battle of Gujerat; and, being 
charged to press the enemy’s retreat, he had so executed his 
task that 158 guns and the ruin of the foe were the fruit of 
the victory. In 1851 and the following year he commanded 
against the hill-tribes. It was he who forced the Kohat 
Pass. It was he who, with only a few horsemen and some 
guns, at Punj Pao, compelled the submission of the combined 
tribes then acting against him with a foree of 8000 men. It 
was he who, at Ishakote, with a force of less than 3000 men, 
was able to end the strife; and when he had brought to sub- 
mission all those beyond the Indus who were in arms against 
the Government, he instantly gave proof of the breadth and 
scope of his mind as well as of the force of his character; for 
he withstood the angry impatience of men in authority over 
him, and insisted that he must be suffered to deal with the 
conquered people in the spirit of a politic and merciful ruler. 

After serving with all this glory for some forty-four years, 
he came back to England ; but between the Queen and him 
there stood a dense crowd of families—men, women, and 
children—extending farther than the eye could reach, and 
armed with strange precedents which made it out to be 
right that people who had seen no service should be invest- 
ed with high command, and that Sir Celin Campbell should 
be only a colonel. Yet he was of so fine a nature that, al- 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 661 


_ though he did not always avoid great bursts of anger, there 
was no ignoble bitterness in his sense of wrong. He awaited 
the time when perhaps he might have high command, and 
be able to serve his country in a sphere proportioned to his 
strength. His friends, however, were angry for his sake; 
and along with their strong devotion toward him there was 
bred a fierce hatred of a system of military dispensation 
which could keep in the background a man thus tried and 
thus known. 

Upon the breaking out of the war with Russia, Sir Colin 
was appointed—not to the command of a division, but of a 
brigade. It was not till the June of 1854 that his rank in 
the army became higher than that of a colonel. 

Campbell was not the slave, he was the master of his call- 
ing, and therefore it was that he had been able to save his 
intellect from the fate of being drowned in military details. 
He knew that although a general must have a complete 
mastery of even the smallest of such things, still they were 
only a part—a minute though essential part—of the great 
science of war. He understood the precious material where- 
of our army is formed. He heartily loved our soldiery ; for 
he was a soldier, and had fellow-feeling with soldiers, and 
they had fellow-feeling with him. Instinctively they knew 
that, together, they might do great things—he by their help, 
they by his. Knowing the worth of their devotion and their 
bodily strength, he cherished them with watchful care; and 
they, on their part, loved, honored, and obeyed him with a 
faith that all he ordered was right. He set great store upon 
discipline, but it was never for discipline’s sake that he did 
so (as if that were itself an end), but because he knew it to 
be one of the main sources of military ascendency. So, al- 
though the officers and soldiers serving under him got no 
more rest than was good for them, they were never vexed 
_ wantonly ; and in proportion as they grew in knowledge of 
their calling, they came to understand why it was that their 
chief compelled them to toil. 

A bodily ardor for fighting may be more or less masked 
and hidden; but he to whom this great passion is wanting 1s 
without the quality of a general. For warfare is so anxious 
and complex a business, that against every vigorous move- 
ment heaps of reasons can forever be found; and if a man is 
so cold a lover of battle as to have no stronger guide than 
the poor balance of the arguments and counter-arguments 
which he addresses to his troubled spirit, his mind, driven 
first one way and then another, will oscillate, or even revolve, 


662 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


turning miserably on its own axis, and making no movement 
straight forward. Now, it is a characteristic still marking 
the Scottish blood, that often—and not the less so when it 
flows in the veins of a gentle-hearted being—it is seen to 
fire strangely and suddenly at the prospect of a fight. Camp- 
bell loved warfare with a deep passion; and at the thought 
of battle his grand, rugged face used to kindle with uncon- 
trollable joy. 

‘The brigade of Guards will be destroyed; ought it not to 
‘fall back?’ When Sir Colin Campbell heard this saying,’ 
his blood rose so high that the answer he gave—impassioned 
and far-resounding—was of a quality to govern events. 

‘It is better, Sir, that every man of Her Majesty’s Guards 
‘should lie dead upon the field than that they should now 
‘turn their backs upon the enemy!’ Doubts and question- 
ings ceased.® Sir Colin Campbell rode off to his left. 


Page 576. ‘He therefore sent Sterling,’ ete.—Colonel Douglas’s narra- 
tive of the part which the 79th took in the battle is to the effect that no 
order was brought him by any officer of the brigade except Shadwell ; but 
it also appears from his statement that he has no recollection of having re- 
ceived from any one the order stated in the text. 

Page 578. ‘but their left was bare.’—By reason of the retreat of the 
Scots Fusileer Guards. 

Page 580. ‘ left in the centre of our brigade of Guards.’—‘I saw a heavy 
‘mass of Russians in column in pursuit,’—Private letter from Colonel 
Hood. In another letter he says, ‘the Russian column then passed out in 
pursuit.’ 

Page 580. ‘ and then caused.’—Or allowed. 

Page 580. ‘in command of the left wing.’—It seems that at the moment 
of the halt, a mounted officer not belonging to the battalion rode up to near 
where the left-flank company was, and used the word ‘retire!’ Then 
Percy, looking at the Vladimir column, and seeing in an instant what 
ought not to be done, inferred, or professed to infer, that the manceuvre 
which the conjuncture required was the one which the mounted officer must 
mean. ‘Retire!’ he said. ‘What the devil do they mean? They must 
‘mean ‘‘ dress back.”’ Percy then, aided by Neville, his senior subaltern, 
began causing the subdivision to ‘dress back’ in such a way as to make it 
face toward the Vladimir column; and this, it quickly appeared, was ex- 
actly what Colonel Hood desired, for he rode up and told Percy to go on 
with the operation. 

Page 581. ‘kept their perfect array.—Dalrymple, with the right-flank 


® As to the comparatively subordinate rank of the officer with whom this 
suggestion originated, see note ante. 

° Respecting the way in which he came to hear its purport, see note 
ante. é 

” Then, speaking apart to the Duke of Cambridge, and counseling him 
to go straight on witb the Guards, Sir Colin Campbell undertook to turn 
the redoubt by marching up instantly with the 42nd. 

® The advance was continued. 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 663 


company of the Scots Fusileer Guards, seems to have done good service at 
this conjuncture ; for, wheeling back his left, in conformity with the bend 
effected by Colonel Hood in the line of the Grenadiers, he poured some fif- 
teen volleys into the Vladimir column. 

Page 581. ‘drawn up in superb array.’—But from ground less advanced 
than that which the Grenadiers had reached. 

Page 583. To note 2, the author adds:—I think that the shot which 
struck the column were thrown from guns belonging to Franklin’s battery. 

Page 587. ‘‘‘ brought forward his right shoulder.”’—‘I brought up my 
‘right shoulder.’—Private letter from Colonel Hood, dated the day after the 
battle. One of the characteristics which can hardly fail to interest any one 
who has had the advantage of reading Colonel Hood’s letters, is the exceed- 
ing modesty which makes him continually seek to ascribe all merit to others 
rather than to himself. Thus, although, in hurriedly writing the six words 
above quoted, he chanced to use the first person, he hastened, in a subse- 
quent letter from the banks of the Alma, to give the whole merit of the ma- 
neuvre to the battalion. He writes, ‘ Zustinctively our men brought right 
‘shoulders forward.’ . 

Page 587. ‘fire poured upon its flank.’—‘ Instinctively our men brought 
‘right shoulders forward, and commenced file-firing with such coolness and 
‘accuracy that the effect was instantaneous. ‘They [the Russians] were 
‘checked perceptibly with astonishment at the telling nature of our flank- 
‘fire.’ .V.B. The word which I have written ‘ perceptibly’ seems in the origi- 
nal to have the syllable ‘im’ at its commencement, but I imagine that the 
word as I have written it was the one intended. 

Page 587. ‘ the brave Vladimir bore.’—Speaking, of course, roughly, Col- 
onel Hood puts this period of Russian endurance at ‘ five minutes.’—Private 
letter, 21st Sept., 1854. 

Page 587. ‘ ‘* The line will advance on the centre !”’—In this and in the 
sentence presently following where it occurs, the word ‘on’ should be re- 
placed by the word ‘by.’ 

Page 587. ‘‘* The men may advance firing.” ’—‘ Unsupported I would not 
‘charge, but made my men advance, firing steadily.’—Private letter from 
Colonel Hood, 21st Sept., 1854. 

Page 588. ‘like a throng in confusion.’-—‘ In five minutes the Russian col- 
‘umn faltered, then turned, then ran.’—Private letter from Colonel Hood, 
21st Sept., 1854. 

To note 1, the author adds :—Speaking of this advance of his Grenadiers, 
Colonel Hood writes :—‘I am told the effect was great, and this common- 
“sense maneuvre of a line against a dense column is my only merit. It was 
‘done at Waterloo effectiv. ly, and on the Alma yesterday. I hope due 
‘credit will be done to my_fine fellows, for it was a proud sight to see them 
‘behave so well; and what an honor to command such a body of men! . . 
‘The battalion has been the admiration of French, English, and Russians.’ 
—Private letter, 21st September, 1854. See in a note at the foot of a later 
page an account of the thanks publicly addressed to Colonel Hood and the 
Grenadiers at the close of the battle. 

My numerous quotations from the private journal and private letters of 
Colonel Hood correspond so closely with the tenor of this part of the narra- 
tive that the reader will be likely to say,’.‘That journal and those letters 
‘were evidently the authority on which the author based his account of the 
‘operations of the Grenadier Guards.’ It is, however, a fact, that I never 
saw the journal nor the letters, and never knew any thing of their tenor, 
until after the publication of the first and second editions of this book. 

Page 588. ‘ where lay the dismounted howitzer.’—Respecting the theory—a 


664 NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 


theory propounded by the Quarterly Review—that it was Sir George Brown 
who caused the Grenadier Guards to enter the redoubt, see Appendix, 
Note VIII. 

Page 588. ‘stood master of the Great Redoubt.’ —Considering that 
H.R.H. the ‘Duke of Cambridge commanded the Division to which the 
Grenadiers as well as the Coldstream belonged, and that the Coldstream 
(with which His Royal Highness was personally present) advanced to the 
proper right of the redoubt at a moment not very much later than that at 
which the Grenadiers entered the work at its western extremity, I thought 
it a fair and not untruthful use of language to say, that His Royal High- 
ness, ‘riding up with the Coldstream, stood master of the Great Redoubt.’ 
But I see that, according to Sir George Brown, as represented by the ‘ Quar- 
terly Review,’ the interval between the final advance of the Grenadiers and the 
final advance of the Coldstream was so great as to exclude the Coldstream, 
and, with it, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, from the honor of being 
actual partakers in the movement which effected the recapture of the re- 
doubt ; and, moreover, it is represented by the same authority, that the final 
advance of the Coldstream did not take place at all until after a conference, 
which Sir George Brown thought proper to hold with H.R.H. the Duke of 
Cambridge and with General Bentinck—a conference held after the time when 
(according to the ‘Quarterly Review’) Sir George Brown had caused the re- 
doubt to be occupied by a detachment from the Grenadier Guards. 'The state- 
ment made on this subject by the Quarterly Review with the apparent 
(or transparent) authority of Sir George Brown, is given in the Appendix, 
Note XI., together with the few words of comment which I have chosen 
to add. From these, and from any other materials at his command, the 
reader may judge whether the above sentence of the text, in which I con- 
nect the Duke of Cambridge and the Coldstream with the recapture of the 
redoubt, is worded in terms which should be qualified by bringing to bear 
on them the testimony of Sir George Brown. 

Page 589. ‘ could come down to engage him.’—‘ The immediate object being 
‘to turn the redoubt, while the attack in front was made by the Guards.’— 
Original MS. Report, dated ‘ Bivouac on the River Alma, 22nd September, 
‘1854,’ and signed ‘C. Campbell, Major-General.’ , 

Page 590. ‘Sir Colin Campbell went forward.’ — Riding quite alone. 
He did not choose his staff to be with him at this time, for he knew that a. 
group of officers would be likely to draw more fire than a single horseman. 

Page 590. ‘ Then, with his staff.’—It was not till the 42nd had come up 
that he was rejoined by his staff. 

Page 593. ‘marching straight against the two columns.'—‘ This flank move- 
‘ment was completely successful. . . . The 42nd, being the leading regi- 
‘ment, gained the heights first, and found a large body of Russian troops, 
‘which had just quitted the central redoubt, endeavoring to form in its 
‘front, with another large body already posted there. ‘The 42nd continued 
‘to advance, firing, in line.—The MS. quoted at page 589. 

Page 593. ‘was boldly marching forward.’—‘ On reaching the crest of the 
‘hill on the enemy’s side, another mass was met advancing to support the re- 
‘tiring enemy.’—The MS. quoted at page 589. . 

Page 593. ‘ springing up to the outer crest.’—‘ As these troops [the Russian 
‘column mentioned in the last note] came on, the 93rd arrived most op- 
‘portunely.’—The MS. quoted at page 589. 

Page 597. ‘Jt moved straight at the fiank of the 93rd.’—‘ While the 93rd 
‘was still engaged, another body of Russians from their extreme right 
‘moved down direct on the flank of the 93rd.’—The MS. quoted at page 589. 

Page 598. ‘of a battalion advancing in line.’—I fear that the form of ex- 


NOTES TO FOURTH EDITION. 665 


pression which I have used in the above sentence may be read as indicating a 
greater swiftness of movement than the actual truth would warrant. It is 
quite true that the 79th caught the Russian column in the act of marching 
across its front, and instantly attacked it. This, however, it did—not by a 
charge with the bayonet, but (as is rightly shown by the next sentence of 
the text) by pouring its fire into the flank of the advancing column. 

Page 598. ‘ began to fall back in great confusion.’—Speaking of the column 
which the enemy was moving flankwise from his extreme right, Sir Colin — 
Campbell, in the same MS., says:—‘ At this moment the 79th arrived, and 
‘opened fire upon them, causing them to retreat in great confusion.’ 

Page 598. ‘enemy’s disordered masses.’.—‘The 42nd continued to ad- 
‘vance, firing, in line, and drove these troops before them in confusion, and 
‘caused them great loss. Their resistance was stubborn.’—The MS. quoted 
at page 589. 

Page 598. ‘had chanced in a moment of glory..—‘Thus the three regi- 
‘ments of the Highland brigade were formed in line on the inner crest of 
‘the enemy’s position, having driven all the large bodies of troops which 
‘were posted there down into the valley..—The MS. quoted at page 589. 

Page 599. ‘strove to drive them back into thé fight.’-—After speaking (as 
shown in the former notes) of the defeat of the Russian columns with which 
his brigade had been fighting; Sir Colin Campbell says that they ‘ were 
‘driven down into the valley upon a mass of troops which were placed in 
‘reserve on the heights in their rear, and an attempt was made by this reserve 
‘to move in advance, forcing forward the retiring troops.’-—The MS. quoted 
at page 589. 

Page 599. ‘the Ouglitz column was forced to turn.’—‘ But fire being again 
* opened, this reserve returned to its position, evidently with a view to cover 
‘the men who had been driven by the three Highland regiments.’—The 
MS. quoted at page 589. 

Page 599. ‘cover the retreat of the vanquished masses.’—The conductors 

of the ‘ Quarterly Review’ have thought fit to print in their publication the 
following words :—‘ The Coldstreams took their place on the left of the 
“Grenadiers, and shared in the battle. Lut the battle was already dying out. 
‘The Grenadiers had carried all before them ; the Redan was empty, and; 
‘stealing away in a direction to their own right, the Russian columns were in 
‘full retreat. It was at this juncture that Sir Colin Campbell and his High- 
‘landers made their appearance. Pushing past Buller, Sir Colin’s battal- 
‘ions, coming upin échelon, arrived just in time to see the enemy in full flight, 
‘and fired on them as each battalion got within range, which, however, to the 
. ‘more forward of the three, was never a close range.’—‘ Quarterly Review,’ 
No. 226, p. 567. In answer to this statement, I only say that I refer people 
to the extracts which I have given in the foregoing pages from the original 
Report by Sir Colin Campbell, now lying before me. The Report is official, 
and addressed to the Assistant Adjutant-General of the Division. It is 
dated, as I have said, ‘ Bivouac on the River Alma, 22nd September, 1854,’ 
and is signed ‘C. Campbell, Major-General.’ 
- Page 608. ‘which was not in full retreat.’—It was at this time that 
H.R.H. the-Duke of Cambridge summoned Colonel Hood to his side in or- 
der to have his thanks conveyed to the Grenadiers. Colonel Hood writes :— 
‘The Duke of Cambridge, after the Russians were beaten back, came and 
‘called me to the front to shake me by the hand, and convey his thanks 
‘to the gallant Grenadiers. This was most gratifying. It is true, 1 had 
‘the honor to command, but they command themselves !’ 

Page 616. To note 2, the author adds :—See also now the ‘farther note’ 
in the part which forms Note XIII. of the Appendix. 


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APPENDIX. 


I. 


PAPERS SHOWING THE DIFFERENCE WHICH LED TO THE RUPTURE OF PRINCE 
MENTSCHIKOFF’S NEGOTIATION. 


Draft of Note proposed by Prince Mentschikoff to be addressed to him by the 
Porte.* 


La Sublime Porte, apres l’examen le plus attentif et le plus sérieux des 
demandes qui forment l’objet de la mission extraordinaire confiée & l’Am- 
bassadeur de Russie, Prince Mentschikoff, et aprés avoir soumis le résultat 
de cet examen & Sa Majesté le Sultan, se fait un devoir empressé de notifier 
par la présente a son Altesse l’Ambassadeur la décision Impériale emanée & 
ce sujet par un [rade supréme en date du (date Musulmane 
et Chrétienne). 

Sa Majesté voulant donner & son auguste allié et ami l’Empereur de Rus- 
sie un nouveau témoignage de son amitié la plus sincere, et de son désir 
intime de consolider les anciennes relations de bon voisinage et de parfaite 
entente qui existent entre les deux Etats, placant en méme temps une enticre 
confiance dans les intentions constamment bienveillantes de Sa Majesté Im- 
périale pour le maintien de l’intégrité et de l’indépendance de l’Empire Otto- 
man, a daigné apprécier et prendre en sérieuse considération les représenta- 
tions franches et cordiales dont l’Ambassadeur de Russie s’est rendu l’organe 
en faveur (lu culte orthodoxe Greco-Russe professé par son auguste allié ainsi 
que par la majorité de leurs sujets respectifs. 

Le Soussigné a recu en conséquence l’ordre de donner par la présente note 
lassurance la plus solennelle au Gouvernement de Russie, que représente au- 
pres de Sa Majesté le Sultan son Altesse le Prince Mentschikoff, sur la sollici- 
tude invariable et les sentiments généreux et tolérans qui animent Sa Majesté 
le Sultan pour la sécurité et la prospérité dans ses états du clergé, des églises, 
et des établissements religieux du culte Chrétien d’Orient. 

Afin de rendre ces assurances plus explicites, préciser d’une maniére for- 
melle les objets principaux de cette haute sollicitude, corroborer par des 
éclaircissements supplémentaires que nécessite la marche du temps, le sens 
des Articles qui dans les Traités antérieurs conclus entre les deux Puissances 
ont trait aux questions religieuses, et prévenir enfin & jamais toute nuance 
de malentendu et de désaccord & ce sujet entre les deux Gouvernements, le 
Soussigné est autorisé par Sa Majesté le Sultan a faire les déclarations sui- 
vantes : ' 

1. Le culte orthodoxe d’Orient, son clergé, ses églises, et ses possessions, 
ainsi que ses établissements religieux, jouiront dans l’avenir sans aucune at- 
teinte, sous l’égide de Sa Majesté le Sultan, des privileges et immunités qui 
leur sont assurés ab antiquo, ou qui leur ont été accordés a différentes reprises 
par la faveur Impérial, et dans un principe de haute équité participeront aux 
avantages accordés aux autres rites Chrétiens, ainsi qu’aux Légations Etran- 
geres accréditées prés la Sublime Porte par Convention ou disposition parti- 
culiére. 

* This was the last demand made by the Prince. 


668 APPENDIX. ve 


2. Sa Majesté le Sultan ayant jugé nécessaire et équitable de corroborer et 
d’expliquer son firman souverain revétu du hattihoumayoum le 15 de la lune 
de Rebiul-Akhir 1268 (10 Février, 1852), par son firman souverain du 

et d’ordonner en sus par un autre firman en date du 
la réparation de la coupole du Temple du Saint Sépulere, ces deux firmans 
seront textuellement exécutés et fidelement observés, pour maintenir a jamais 
le status quo actuel des sanctuaires possedés par les Grecs exclusivement ou 
en commun avee d'autres cultes. 

Il est entendu que cette promesse s’étend également au maintien de tous 
les droits et immunités dont jouissent ab antiquo Véglise orthodoxe et son 
clergé tant dans la ville de Jérusalem qu’au-déhors, sans aucun préjudice 
pour les autres communautés Chrétiennes. 

3. Pour le cas ot: la Cour Impériale de Russie en ferait la demande, il sera 
assigné une localité convenable dans la ville de Jérusalem ou dans les envi- 
rons pour la construction d’une é€glise consacrée a la célébration du service 
divin par les ecclésiastiques Russes, et d’un hospice pour les pélerins indigents 
ou malades, lesquelles fondations seront sous la surveillance sp éciale du Con- 
sulat-Général de Russie en Syrie et en Palestine. 

4. On donnera les firmans et les ordres nécessaires a qui de droit et aux 
Patriarehes Grecs pour ’exécution de ees décisions souveraines, et on s’en- 
tendra ultérieurement sur la régularisation des points de détail qui n’auront 
pas trouvé place tant dans les firmans concernant les lieux saints de Jérusa- 
lem que dans la présente notification. 

Le Soussigné, ete. 


Reshid Pasha to Prince Mentschikoff.* 


(Translation. ) 


The statement made by Prince Mentschikoff, in his written and verbal 
communications, concerning the donbts and want of confidence entertained 
by the Porte with regard to His Majesty the Emperor’s good intentions, has 
been seen with great regret. His Majesty the Sultan has perfect faith and 
confidence in His Majesty the Emperor, and highly appreciates the great 
qualities and spirit of justice which animate his august ally and neighbor, and 
it is a great honor for me to proclaim that it has always been His Majesty the 
Sultan’s desire to consolidate and strengthen the friendly relations happily 
subsisting between the two countries. 

With reference to the religious privileges of the Greek churches and clergy, 
the honor of the Porte requires that the exclusively spiritual privileges granted 
under the Sultan’s predecessors, and confirmed by His Majesty, should be now 
and henceforward preserved unimpaired and in force; and the equitable sys- 
tem pursued by the Porte toward its subjects demands that any spiritual 
privilege whatever granted henceforward to one class of Christian subjects 
should not be refused to the Greek clergy. It would be a cause of much re- 
gret that the fixed intentions of His Majesty the Sultan in this respect should 
be called into question. 

Nevertheless, the imperial firman now granted to the Greek Patriarchate, 
confirming the religious privileges, is considered to afford a new proof of His 
Imperial Majesty’s benevolent sentiments in this respect, and the general pro- 
mulgation thereof must afford every security, and remove for ever from His 
Imperial Majesty’s mind all doubts for the future respecting the religion 
which he professes, and it is with pleasure that I perform the duty of making 
this declaration. 

In order that there should be no alteration respecting the Shrines at Jeru- 


* This was the last offer made by the Porte to Prince Mentschikoff. 


IL] , APPENDIX. 669 


salem, it is formally promised that for security in the future thereon the Sub- 
lime Porte will take no step concerning them withott the knowledge of the 
French and Russian Governments. An official note has been addressed to 
the French Embassy also to this purpose. 

The Sultan consents that a church and hospital should be built at Jerusa- 
lem (for the Russians); and the Porte is ready and disposed to conclude a 
Sened, both on this subject and concerning the special privileges of the Rus- 
sian monks at that place. 


IL. 


THE ‘VIENNA NOTE,’ WITH THE PROPOSED TURKISH MODIFICATIONS, SHOWING 
THE POINTS OF THE DIFFERENCE, WHICH WAS FOLLOWED BY WAR BE- 
TWEEN RUSSIA AND TURKEY. 


Copy of the Vienna Projet de Note, as modifted by the Sublime Porte. 


{The Turkish modifications are shown by printing in italics the words which the Porte re- 
jected, and placing the words which it proposed to substitute in the foot-note.] 

Sa Majesté le Sultan n’ayant rien de plus & coeur que de rétablir entre elle 
et Sa Majeste l’Empereur de Russie les relations de bon voisinage et de par- 
faite entente qui ont été malheureusement altérées par de récentes et péni- 
bles complications, a pris soigneusement & tacher de rechercher les moyens 
deffacer les traces de ce différend. 

Un iradé supréme en date du lui ayant fait connai- 
tre la décision Impériale, la Sublime Porte se félicite de pouyoir la commu- 
niquer a son Excellence M.le Comte de Nesselrode. 

Si a toute époque les Empereurs de Russie ont témoignés leur active sol- 
licitude pour fe maintien des immunités et privileges de i’ Eylise Orthodoxe 
Grecque dans 1 Empire Ottoman, les Sultans ne se sont jamais refusés & les con- 
sacrer* de nouveau par des actes solennels qui attestaient de leur ancienne et 
constante bienveillance a l’egard de leurs sujets Chrétiens. 

Sa Majesté le Sultan Abdul -Medjid, aujourd’hui régnant, animé des 
mémes dispositions et voulant donner a Sa Majesté l’Empereur de Russie un 
témoignage personnel de son amitié la plus sincere, n’a écouté que sa confi- 
ance infinie dans les qualités éminentes de son auguste ami et all?é, et a 
daigné prendre en sérieuse considération les représentations dont son Altes- 
se le Prince de Mentschikoff s’est rendu ’organe aupreés de la Sublime Porte. 

Le Soussigné a regu en conséquence l’ordre de déclarer par la présente que 
Je Gouvernement de Sa Majes‘é le Sultan restera fidéle @ (a lettre et a Pesprit 
des stipulations des Traités de Kainardji et d’ Andrinople, relatives a la protec- 
tion du culte Chrétien,t et que Sa Majesté regarde comme étant de son hon- 
neur de faire observer & tout jamais, et de préserver de toute atteinte, soit 
présentement, soit dans l’avenir, la jouissance’des priviléges spirituels qui ont 
été accordés par les augustes aieux de Sa Majesté a l’Eglise Orthodoxe de 
POrient, qui sont maintenus et confirmés par elle; et, en outre, & faire. par- 
ticiper dans un esprit de haute équité le rit Grec aux avantages concédés aux 
autres rits Chrétiens par Convention ou disposition particuliére.t 

* Le culte et l’Eglise Orthodoxe Grecque, les Sultans n’ont jamais cessé de veiller au 
maintien des immunités et priv léges qu’ils ont spontanément accordés 4 diverses reprises & 
ce culte et A cette EKglise dans Empire Ottoman, et de les consacrer. 

+ Aux stipulations du Traité de Kainardji confirme par celui d’Andrinople, relatives 4 la 
protection par la Sublime Porte de la religion Chrétienne, et il est en outre chargé de faire 
connaitre. 


t Octroyés ou qui seraient octroyés aux autres communautés Chrétiennes sujettes Otto- 
manes, 


670 APPENDIX. gece 


Au reste, comme le firman Impérial qui vient d’étre donné au patriarcat 
et au clergé Grec, et qui contient les confirmations de leurs privileges spirit- 
uels, devra étre regardé comme une nouvelle preuve de ses nobles sentiments, 
et comme, en outre, la proclamation de ce firman, qui donne toute sécurité, 
devra faire disparaitre toute crainte a l’égard du rit qui est la religien de Sa 
Majesté l’Empereur de Russie; je suis heureux d’étre chargé du devoir de 
farie la présente notification. 


ITI. 


PAPERS SHOWING THE CONCORD EXISTING BETWEEN THE FOUR POWERS AT 
THE TIME WHEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND WERE ENGAGING IN A SEPARATE 
COURSE OF ACTION. 


Protocol of a Conference held at Vienna, February 2, 1854. 
(Translation.) 


Present: The Representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prus-. 
sia. 

The Representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prussia, have 
met together in conference to hear the communication which the Austrian 
Plenipotentiary has been good enough to make to them of the propositions 
submitted by the Cabinet of St. Petersburg in reply to those which he had 
undertaken, on the 13th of January, to forward to the Imperial Government, 
and which were sanctioned by the approval of the Powers represented in the 
Conference of Vienna. The document which contains them is annexed to 
the present Protocol. 

The Undersigned, after having submitted the above-mentioned proposi- 
tions to the most careful examination, have ascertained that, in their general 
character and in their details, they so essentially differ from the basis of ne- 
gotiation agrced upon on the 31st of December at Constantinople, and ap- 
proved on the 13th January at Vienna, that they have not considered them 
to be such as should be forwarded to the Government of His Imperial Maj- 
esty the Sultan. 

It consequently only remains for the Undersigned to transmit the annexed 
document to their respective Courts, and to wait till they shall have taken 
their final resolutions. 


(Signed) BUOL-SCHAUENSTEIN. 
BOURQUENEY. 
WESTMORLAND. 
ARNIM. 


The Earl of Westmorland to the Earl of Clarendon.—( Received February 18.)* 
; Vienna, February 8, 1853. 

My Lorp,—I have just left the Conference to which Count Buol had this 
morning invited me, in conjunction with my colleagues. Upon our assem- 
bling; he stated that he had no proposal to make to us, but, in consideration 
of the perfect union existing amongst us upon the Eastern Question, he 
thought he was forwarding our common objects by communicating the dis- 
patches he had addressed to Count Esterhazy, for the purpose of being sub- 
mitted to Count Nesselrode. 

Count Buol then read to us these dispatches. The first gave an account 
of the proposal brought forward by Count Orloff, that the Emperor of Aus- 


* i.e. just one fortnight before England dispatched the hostile summons which brought 
her into a state of war. 


HL] : APPENDIX. 671 


tria should, in conjunction with Prussia, take an engagement with the Em- 
peror of Russia for the maintenance of a strict neutrality in the war now ex- 
isting with the Porte, and in which the Maritime Powers seemed likely to 
take part. Count Buol, in his dispatch, develops in the clearest and most 
distinct language the impossibility of the adoption by the Emperor of any 
such engagement. He states, with all courtesy to the Emperor Nicholas, the 
obligations by which the Austrian Government is bound to watch over the 
strict maintenance of the principle of the independence and integrity of Tur- 
key—a principle proclaimed by the Emperor Nicholas himself, but which the 
passage of the Danube by his troops might, by the encouragement of insur- 
rections in the Turkish Provinces, endanger. Count Buol, therefore, states 
that he can not take the engagement proposed to him. The second dispatch 
to Count Esterhazy relates to the answer which has been returned to the 
proposals for negotiations transmitted by Count Buol with the sanction of 
the Conference on the 13th ultimo. 

In this dispatch, Count Buol states with considerable force the disappoint- 
ment felt by the Emperor at the want of success which had attended his rec- 
ommendation in favor of the Turkish propositions. He enters very fully 
into the subject, and renews the expression of the Emperor’s most anxious 
desire that the Emperor Nicholas may still adopt the proposals which had 
been submitted to him. 

The last dispatch is one in which Count Buol replies to the reproach which 
was addressed to the Imperial Government, that by its present conduct it 
was abandoning the principles upon which the three Governments of Russia, 
Austria, and Prussia, had hitherto acted for the maintenance of the estab- 
lished interest and independence of the different States of Europe, and that, 
by so doing, it was endangering the established order of things in Europe, 
and the security at present existing. 

The answer of Count Buol to this reproach is very firmly and clearly 
stated. . 

It is impossible for me to give your Lordship a more detailed account, be- 
fore the departure of the messenger, of these dispatches; but I must add, 
that they met with the entire approbation of the members of the Conference, 
that they were looked upon as most ably drawn up, and that while using 
every courteous and friendly expression toward the Emperor Nicholas, they 
most clearly pointed out the present position which the Austrian Govern- 
ment would maintain with the view of upholding the principles they had pro- 
claimed, and the engagements which they had taken for their support.* 


Protocol of a Conference held at Vienna, March 5, 1854. 
(Translation.) 


Present: the Representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prus- 
sia. 
The undersigned, Representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, and 
Prussia, having again met in Conference on the summons of the Austrian 
Plenipotentiary, the annexed document which had been communicated to 
the Cabinet of Vienna by the Envoy of Russia, and which contains the pre- 
liminaries of the Treaty to be concluded between Russia and the Porte, was 
read to them, the Court of Austria being requested by the Cabinet of St. 
Petersburg to apply for the support of the two Maritime Powers in order to 
obtain the acceptance of these preliminaries by the Sublime Porte. 

* The rest of the dispatch relates only to a suggestion for an arrangement which came to 
nothing, and is therefore omitted. 


t i. e. whilst messengers were carrying the hostile summons from Paris and London to 
St. Petersburg. 


672 APPENDIX. ’ [11. 


After mature deliberation, the Plenipotentiaries of France and Great Brit- 
ain, taking as the basis of their examination the previous documents which 
had received the sanction of the four Powers, established the existence of 
radical differences between those documents and the proposed preliminaries. 

1. Inasmuch as the evacuation of the Danubian Principalities, which is 
fixed to take place after the signature of the preliminaries, is made to depend 
on the departure of the combined fleets not only from the Black Sea, but 
from the Straits of the Bosphorus and of the Dardanelles, a condition which 
could only be admitted by the Maritime Powers after the conclusion of the 
definitive treaty. 

2. Inasmuch as the document now under consideration tends to invest 
with a form strictly conventional, bilateral, and exclusively applicable to the 
relations of the Porte with Russia, the assurances relative to the religious 
privileges of the Greeks—assurances which the Porte has only offered to give 
to the five Powers at the same time and in the form of a simple identic 
declaration. The assurances, in fact, once inserted in the preliminary ‘Treaty, 
must then needs be reproduced in the definitive Treaty, and would be ac- 
companied moreover by an official note confirmatory of the said privileges 
exclusively addressed io the Court of Russia, a note which, in its turn, would 
be considered! as annexed to the Treaties, that is to say, as having the same 
force and the same effect. 

3. Inasmuch as the preliminaries communicated to Vienna are by implica- 
tion withheld from any discussion in Conference upon the modifications con- 
sidered necessary to make them correspond with the original text of the 
Acts which had received its assent, and inasmuch as the conclusion of the 
definitive Treaty contains no greater reservation for its inspection and inter- 
ference. 

4. Inasmuch as whilst the propositions of the Porte expressly require the 
revision of the Treaty of 1841, so as to make Turkey participate in the guar- 
antees of the public law of Europe, this condition is passed over in silence. 

The Plenipotentiaries of Austria and Prussia, appreciating the force of the 
observations offered by the Plenipotentiaries of France and of Great Britain, 
recognized in like manner on their part the remarkable differences pointed 
out between the Russian draft of preliminaries and the Protocols of the 13th 
of January and 2nd of February. 

In censequence, the Conference unanimously agreed that it was impossible 


to proceed with those propositions. 
(Signed) BUOL-SCHAUENSTEIN, 
BOURQUENEY. 
WESTMORLAND. 
ARNIM. 


Protocol of a Conference held at Vienna, April 9, 1854.* 
(Translation. ) 

Present: The Representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prus- 
sia. 

At the request of the Plenipotentiaries of France and of Great Britain, 
the Conference met to hear the documents read which establish that the in- 
vitation addressed to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg to evacuate the Moldo- 
Wallachian provinces within a fixed time having remained unanswered, the 
state of war already declared between Russia and the Sublime Porte is in 
actual existence equally between Russia on the one side, and France and 


Great Britain on the other. 
This change which has taken place in the attitude of two of the Powers 


* i. e. the very day before the treaty of alliance between England and France, 


MLy APPENDIX. 673 


represented at the Conference ot Vienna, in conscquence of a step taken di- 
rectly by France and England, supported by Austria and Prussia as being 
founded in right, has been considered by the Representatives of Austria and 
Prussia as involving the necessity of a fresh declaration of the union of the 
four Powers upon the ground of the principles laid down in the Protocols of 
December 5, 1853, and January 13, 1854. 

In couseqtence, the Undersigned have at this solemn+>moment declared 
that their Governments remain united in the double object of maintaining 
the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, of which the fact of the 
evacuation of the Danubian Principalities is and will remain one of the es- 
sential conditions; and of consolidating in an interest so much in conformi- 
ty with the sentiments of the Sultan, and by every means compatible with 
his independence and sovereignty, the civil and religious rights of the Chris- 
tian subjects of the Porte. 

The territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire is and remains the sine 
gua non condition of every transaction having for its object the re-establish- 
ment of peace between the belligerent Powers; and the Governments repre- 
sented by the Undersigned engage to endeavor in common to discover the 
guarantees most likely to attach the existence of that Empire to the general 
equilibrium of Europe; as they also declare themselves ready to deliberate 
and to come to an understanding as to the employment of the means calcu- 
lated to accomplish the object of their agreement. 

Whatever event may arise in consequence of this agreement, founded sole- 
ly upon the general interests of Europe, and of which the object can only be 
attained by the return of a firm and lasting peace, the Governments repre- 
sented by the Undersigned reciprocally engage not to enter into any defini- 
tive arrangements with the Imperial Court of Russia, or with any other 
Power, which would be at variance with the principles above enunciated, 


without previously deliberating thereon in common. 
(Signed) BUOL-SCHAUENSTEIN. 
BOURQUENEY. 
WESTMORLAND. 
ARNIM. 


Treaty of Alliance, Offensive and Defensive, between Austria and Prussia. 
(Translation.) 


His Majesty the Emperor of Austria and His Majesty the King of Prus- 
sia, penetrated with deep regret at the fruitlessness of their attempts hitherto 
to prevent the breaking out of war between Russia, on the one hand, and 
Turkey, France, and England, on the other ; 

Mindful of the moral nage entered into by them by the signing of 
the last Vienna Protocol ; 

In the face of the militar y measures ever gathering on both sides around 
them, and of the dangers resulting therefrom for the general peace of Europe ; 

Convinced of the high duty which on the threshold of a future pregnant 
with evil, is imposed, in the interest of the European welfare, on Germany, 
SO intimately united with the States of the two High Parties ; 

Have determined to ally themselves in an offensive and defensive alliance 
for the duration of the war which has broken out between Russia, on the one 
hand, and Turkey, France, and England, on the other, and have appointed 
for the conclusion of it the following Plenipotentiaries ; 

His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, the Baron Henry de Hess, his actual 
Privy Councilor, &c., &c.; and the Count Frederick de Thun-Hohenstcin, 
his Chamberlain, actual Pri ivy Councilor, &., &e. ; 

And His Majesty the King of Prussia, the Baron Othon ‘Theodore de 


Vor. L—F F 


674 APPENDIX. [1II. 


Manteuffel, his President of the Council of Ministers, and Minister for For- 
eign Affairs, &c., &e. 

The same having exchanged their full powers found to be in good order, 
have agreed upon the following points : 


ARTICLE I. 


His Imperial Apostolic Majesty and His Majesty the King of Prussia 
guarantee to each other reciprocally the possession of their German and non- 
German possessions, so that an attack made on the territory of the one, from 
whatever quarter, will be regarded by the other as an act of hostility against 
his own territory. 

ARTICLE II. 


In the same manner, the High Contracting Parties hold themselves en- 
gaged to defend the rights and interests of Germany against all and every 
injury, and consider themselves bound accordingly for the mutual repulse of 
every attack on any part whatsoever of their territories ; likewise also in the 
case where one of the two may find himself, in understanding with the other, 
obliged to advance actively for the defense of German interests. The agree- 
ment relating to the latter-named eventuality, as likewise the extent of the 
assistance then to be given, will form a special as also integral part of the 
present Convention. 


ARTICLE III. 


In order also to give due security and force to the conditions of the of- 
fensive and defensive alliance now concluded, the two great Great German 
Powers bind themselves, in case of need, to hold in perfect readiness for war 
a part of their forces, at periods to be determined between them and in po- 
sitions to be fixed. With respect to the time, the extent, and the nature of 
the placing of those troops, a special stipulation will likewise be determined. 


ARTICLE IV. 


The High Contracting Parties will invite all the German Governments of 
the Confederation to accede to this alliance, with the understanding that the 
federal obligations existing in virtue of Article 47 of the final Act of Vienna 
will receive the same extension for the States who accede as the present 
Treaty stipulates. 


ARTICLE V. 


Neither of the two High Contracting Parties will, during the duration of 
this alliance, enter into any separate alliance with other Powers which shall 
not be in entire harmony with the basis of the present treaty. 


ARTICLE VI. 


The present Convention shall be ratified as soon as possible by the High 
Contracting Sovereigns. : 
Done at Berlin, April 20, 1854.* 


(L.8.) HENRY BON. DE HESS. 
(L.S.) F. THEN. 
(L. §.) BON. OTH. THEOD. MANTEUFFEL. 


(Translation.) 


Additional Article to the Offensive and Defensive Alliance between Austria and’ 
Prussia of April 20, 1854. 


According to the conditions of Article II. of the Treaty concluded this day 


* 7. e. ten days after the date of the Anglo-French alliance,. 


- 


IL.) 3 APPENDIX. 675 


between His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Austria and His Majesty the 
King of Prussia for the establishment of an offensive and defensive alliance, 
amore intimate understanding with respect to the eventuality when an act- 
ive advance of one of the High Contracting Parties may impose on the other 
the obligation of a mutual protection of the territory of both, was to form the 
subject of a special agreement to be considered as an integral part of the 
Treaty. 

Their Majesties have not been able to divest themselves of the considera- 
tion that the indefinite continuance of the occupation of the territories on the 
Lower Danube, under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Porte, by Imperial 
Russian troops, would endanger the political, moral, and material interests 
of the whole German Confederation as also of their own States, and the 
more so in proportion as Russia extends her warlike operations on Turkish 
territory. 

The Courts of Austria and Prussia are united in the desire to avoid every 
participation in the war which has broken out between Russia, on the one 
hand, and Turkey, France, and Great Britain, on the other, and at the same 
time to contribute to the restoration of general peace. They more especially 
consider the declarations lately made at Berlin by the Court of St. Peters- 
burg, to be an important element of pacification, the failure of the practical 
influence of which they would view with regret. According to these decla- 
rations, Russia appears to regard the original motive for the occupation of 
the Principalities as removed by the concessions now granted to the Chris- 
tian subjects of the Porte, which offer the prospect of realization. They 
therefore hope that the replies awaited from the Cabinet of Russia to the 
Prussian propositions, transmitted on the 8th, will offer to them the neces- 
sary guarantee for an early withdrawal of the Russian troops. In the event 
that this hope should be illusory, the Plenipotentiaries named, on the part 
of His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, Freiherr Baron von Hess and Count 
Thun, and on the part of His Majesty the King of Prussia, Baron Manteuffel; 
have drawn up the following more detailed agreement with respect to the 
eventuality alluded to in the above-mentioned-Artide II. of the Treaty of 
Alliance of this day : Sigg PTT 

Single Article. 

The'Imperial Austrian Government will also on their side address a com- 
munication to the Imperial Russian Court with the object of obtaining from 
the Emperor of Russia the necessary orders that an immediate stop should 
be put to the farther advance of his armies upon the Turkish territory, as 
also to request of His Imperial Majesty sufficient guarantees for the prompt 
evacuation of the Danubian Principalities ; and the Prussian Government 
will again, in the most emphatic manner, support these communications with 
reference to their proposals already sent to St.Petersburg. Should the an- 
swer of the Russian Court to these steps of the Cabinets of Vienna and Ber- 
lin—contrary to expectation—not be of a nature to give them entire satisfac- 
tion upon the two points aforementioned, the measures to be taken by one 
of the Contracting Parties for their attainment, according to the terms of 
Article II. of the Offensive and Defensive Alliance signed on this day, will 
be on the understanding that every hostile attack on the territory of one of 
the Contracting Parties is to be repelled with all the military forces at the 
disposal of the other. ; 

But a mutual offensive advance is stipulated for only in the event of the 
incorporation of the Principalities, or in the event of an attack on or passage 
of the Balkan by Russia. * ; 

* Of course the contemplated march of Austrian troops into the Principalities (though 


676 APPENDIX. fIL. 


The present Convention shall be submitted for the ratification of the High 
Sovereigns simultaneously with the above-mentioned ‘Treaty. 


Done at Berlin, the 20th of April, 1854. 
(Signed) HESS. (Signed) MANTEUFFEL. 
THUN. 


Protocol signed at Vienna on the 23d of May, 1854, by the Representatives of 
Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prussia. 


(Translation. ) 


Present: The Representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, and Prus- 
sia. 

The Undersigned Plenipotentiaries have deemed it conformable to the ar- 
rangements contained in the Protocol of the 9th of April, to meet in confer- 
ence in order to communicate reciprocally and record in one common Act 
the Conventions concluded between France and England on the one hand, 
and between Austria and Prussia on the other, upon the 10th and 20th of 
April of the present year. 

After a careful examination of the aforesaid Conventions, the Undersigned 
have unanimously agreed : 

1. That the Convention concluded between France and England, as well 
as that signed on the 20th of April between Austria and Prussia, bind both 
of them, in the relative situations to which they apply, to secure the mainte- 
nance of the principle established by the series of Protocols of the Conference 
of Vienna. 

2. That the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and the evacuation of that 
portion of its territory which is occupied by the Russian army, are and will 
continue to be the constant and invariable object of the union of the four 
Powers. 

3. That, consequently, the Acts communicated and annexed to the present 
Protocol correspond to the engagement which the Plenipotentiaries had mu- 
tually contracted on the 9th of April, to deliberate and agree upon the means 
most fit to accomplish the object of their union, and thus give a fresh sanc- 
tion to the firm intention of the four Powers represented at the Conference 
of Vienna, to combine all their efforts and resolutions to realize the object 
which forms the basis of their union. 

' (Signed) BUOL-SCHAUENSTEIN,. 
BOURQUENEY. 


WESTMORLAND. 
ARNIM. 


Convention between His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Austria and the Ot- 
toman Porte. Signed at hoyadji-Keuy, June 14, 1854. 


(Translation. ) 


His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, fully recognizing that the existence 
of the Ottoman Empire within its present limits is necessary for the mainte- 
nance of the balance of power between the States of Europe, and that, spe- 
cifically, the evacuation of the Danubian Principalities is one of the essential 
conditions of the integrity of that Empire; being, moreover, ready to join, 
with the means at his disposal, in the measures proper to insure the object 
of the agreement established between his Cabinet and the High Courts rep- 
resented at the Conference of Vienna: 


undertaken with a view to expel the Russian forces) could not be ‘a mutual offensive ad- 
‘vance.’ The clause defines the circumstances in which the two great German sovereigns 
should be bound to attack Russia, and does not cast any obscurity upon that part of the 
treaty which provided for the event-in which ‘one of the two may find himself in under- 
‘standing with the others obliged to advance actively for the defense of German interests.’ 


IiI.] APPENDIX. 677 


His Imperial Majesty the Sultan having on his side accepted this offer of 
concert made in a friendly manner by His Majesty the Emperor of Austria ; 

It has seemed proper to conclude a Convention, in order to regulate the 
manner in which the concert in question shall be carried into effect. 

With this object, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Austria and His 
Imperial Majesty the Sultan have named as their Plenipotentiaries, that is 
to say: 

' His Majesty the Emperor of Austria, M. le Baron Charles de Bruck, Privy 
Councilor of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, his Internuncio and 
Minister Plenipotentiary at the Sublime Ottoman Porte, Grand Cross of the 
Imperial Order of Leopold, Knight of the Imperial Order of the Iron Crown 
of the first class, &c. ; : ' 

And His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, Mustapha Reshid Pasha, late Grand 
Vizier, and at present his Minister for Foreign Affairs, decorated with the Im- 
perial Order of Medjidié of the first class, &c. ; 

Who, after having exchanged their full powers, found to be in good and 
due form, have agreed upon the following Articles: 


ARTICLE JI, 


His Majesty the Emperor of Austria engages to exhaust all the means of 
negotiation and ali other means to obtain the evacuation of the Danubian 
Principalities by the foreign army which occupies them, and even to employ, 
in case they are required, the number of troops necessary to attain this end. 


ARTICLE II. 


It will appertain in this case exclusively to the Imperial Commander-in- 
chief to direct the operations of his army. He will, however, always take 
care to inform the Commander-in-chief of the Ottoman army of his opera- 
tions in proper time. | 

Articie III. 


His Majesty the Emperor of Austria undertakes by common agreement 
with the Ottoman Government to re-establish in the Principalities, as far as 
possible, the legal state of things such as it results from the privileges securcd 
by the Sublime Porte in regard to the administration of those countries. The 
local authorities thus reconstituted shall not, however, extend their action so 
far as to attempt to exercise control over the Imperial army. 


ARTICLE IV. 


The Imperial Court of Austria farther engages not to enter into any plan 
of accommodation with the Imperial Court of Russia which has not for its 
basis the sovereign rights of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, as well as the 
integrity of his Empire. 

ARTICLE Y. 


As soon as the object of the present Convention shall have been obtained 
by the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace between the Sublime Porte and the 
Court of Russia, His Majesty the Emperor of Austria will immediately make 
arrangements for withdrawing his forces with the least possible delay from 
the territory of the Principalities. The details respecting the retreat of the 
Austrian troops shall form the object of a special understanding with the 
Sublime Porte. 


; Articte VI. 
The Austrian Government expects that the authorities of the countries 


temporarily occupied by the Imperial troops will afford them every assistance 
and facility, as well for their march, their lodging or encampment, as for 


678 APPENDIX. [IV: 


their subsistence and that of their horses, and for their communications. 
The Austrian Government likewise expects that every demand relating to 
the requirements of the service shall be complied with, which shall be ad- 
dressed. by the Austrian commanders, either to the Ottoman Government, 
through the Imperial Internunciate at Constantinople, or directly to the 
local authorities, unless more weighty reasons render the execution of them 
impossible. / 

It is understood that the commanders of the Imperial army will provide 
for the maintenance of the strictest discipline among their troops, and will 
respect, and cause to be respected, the properties as well as the laws, the re- 
ligion, and the customs of the country. 


ARTICLE VII. 


The present Convention shall be ratified, and the ratifications shall be ex- 
changed at Vienna in the space of four weeks, or earlier, if possible, dating 
from the day of its signature. 

In faith of which, the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed it and set 
cheir seals to it. 

Done in duplicate, for one and the same effect, at Boyadji-Keuy, the 
fourteenth of June, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four. 

(L.8.) V. BRUCK. (L.S.) RESHID. 


IV. 


Note to Page 200. 


The condition of the French Emperor on the day of Magenta was publicly 
seen, but on the day of the great battle which was soon afterward fought 
on the Mincio he avoided the criticism of multitudinous eye-witnesses, and 
great pains were taken to make France and Europe believe that the Em- 
peror, on the day of Solferino, was not only in a state to be able to give 
useful orders, but was actually present in a part of the field where there 
was dreadful danger. ‘The Emperor Napoleon,’ said the Movriteur, 
‘was, so to speak, superior to himself: every where he was seen, always 
‘directing the battle ; every one about him shuddered at the danger which 
‘incessantly threatened him; he alone seemed to be ignorant of it.’ These 
efforts caused people in England to believe a good deal of what was repre- 
sented to them; but in France their success was hindered by a practical 
difficulty which the French Emperor had brought upon himself by his odd 
love of dresses and imitative display. In the ride he took on the day of 
Solferino, he had chosen to be followed—not only, as might have been ex- 
pected, by a numerous staff, but also by a cavalry escort, with beautiful 
new dresses and decorations, which went by the name of the ‘Cent 
‘Gardes’—‘ The Hundred Guards.’ All these horsemen—the whole Im- 
perial staff, and the cavalry escort—covered altogether a good deal of 
ground—ground as broad and as long as many a whole street; and if 
they had really intruded themselves into any part of the field where there was 
what may be called ‘fighting,’ then, humanly speaking, they must have 
undergone dreadful carnage. It so happened, however, that of all this 
acreage of horsemen not one was killed, and only one of the ‘ Cent Gardes’ 
was even touched—said by some to have been struck in a part of his dress, 
and warranted by the Montteur to have been hit in the actual body.— 
Moniteur, 29th June, 1859. Here then, was the practical difficulty. It 


Vv.) APPENDIX. 679 


had to be represented that a large mass of horsemen had been moving 
about all day in the thick of a most bloody battle, and yet had remained 
unscathed. In this stress the Moniteur did not hesitate. It resorted to 
the theory of preternatural agency. It declared that the protection which 
the Deity threw around the Emperor was extended to his suite. ‘ La protec- 
tion dont Dieu l’a couvert-s’est etendue a-son- état-major.—Moniteur, 
29th June, 1859. 

Paris laughed her laugh; and thenceforth it seems to have been under- 
stood by the more prudent of the Imperialists in France that the subject of 
their master’s demeanor on the day of Solferino was one which they might 
advantageously drop. 

The process of dispelling a falsehood sometimes generates a wrong notion 
—a notion that the exact opposite of the falsehood so dispelled is the 
truth. I must guard against this. ‘The French Emperor at Solferino con- 
ducted himself in exact accordance with what I have said in the text. 
‘He did not so give way to fear as to prove that he had less self-control in 
“moments of danger than the common run of peaceful citizens; but. he 
*showed that though he had chosen to set himself heroic tasks, his tempera- 
‘ment was ill-fitted for the hour of battle and for the crisis of an adven- 
“ture.’ 


ae 


LORD CLARENDON’S DISPATCH DEMANDING THE EVACUATION OF ‘THE 
PRINCIPALITIES. 


The Earl of Clarendon to Count Nesselrode. 


Foreign Office, February 27, 1854. 

M. tx Comte,—As the ordinary channels of communication between En- 
gland and Russia have been closed by the recent interruption of diplomatic 
relations between the two Courts, I am under the necessity of addressing , 
myself directly to your Excellency on a matter of the deepest importance 
to our respective Governments and to Europe. 

The British Government has for many months anxiously labored, in con- 
junction with its allies, to effect a reconciliation of differences between Rus- 
sia and the Sublime Porte, and it is with the utmost pain that the British 
Government has come to the conclusion that one last hope alone remains of 
averting the calamity which has so long impended over Europe. 

It rests with the Government of Russia to determine whether that hope 
shall be realized or extinguished ; for the British Government, having ex- 
hausted all the efforts of negotiation, is compelled to declare to the Cabinet 
of St. Petersburg, that if Russia should decline to restrict within purely dip- 
lomatic limits the discussion in which she has for some time past been en- 
gaged with the Sublime Porte, and does not, by return of the messenger who 
is the bearer of my present letter, announce her intention of causing the 
Russian troops under the orders of Prince Gortschakoff to commence their 
march with a view to recross the Pruth, so that the Provinces of Moldavia 
and Wallachia shall be completely evacuated on the 30th of April next, the 
British Government must consider the refusal or the silence of the Cabinet 
of St. Petersburg as equivalent to a declaration of war, and will take its 
measures accordingly. 

The messenger who is the bearer of this letter to your Excellency is di- 
rected not to wait more than six days at St. Petersburg for your reply; and 


680 _ APPENDIX. | . fee 


I earnestly trust that he may convey to me an announcement on the part of 
the Russian Government that by the 30th of April next the Principalities 


will cease to be arenpiad by Russian forces. _ I have, etc., 
(Signed) ) CLARENDON. 


VI. 


Note respecting the torpor of the English Cabinet on the evening of the 28th of 
June, 1854. 


When a man has been set to sleep by a document, he commonly imag- 
ines that he was awake all the time, and that he ‘‘ heard every word.” A 
firm impression of that sort is one of the known phenomena of sleep in a 
chair; and it is obvious, therefore, that any of those who slept the sleep of 
which I have spoken may honestly contradict the statement in the text, with- 
out, however, being entitled to expect that their contradiction will have any 
weight. But, though the accuracy of the statement will be denied—and 
denied in perfect good faith—by those who slept, it will not, I am sure, be 
questioned by any of those who remained awake. Of course the delibera- 
tions of a Cabinet ought to be kept secret; but sleep is not deliberation, and 
there is no rule or principle which precludes a Minister from describing any 
natural phenomenon which he may have observed at a Cabinet meeting, 

I own that to me the assenting disposition of those who remained awake 
(for they were anxious, careful, laborious. men) is harder to account for than 
the condition of those who were in a complete state of rest ; and I incline 
to the solution which I have spoken of as likely to be offered by the analyt- 
ical chemist, because his theory (that of a narcotic substance having been 
taken by some mischance) would account for a torpor which affected all 
more or less, though in different ways and in different degrees. 

That I am right in the view I take as to the inexorable stringency of the 
Dispatch, is shown, I think, clearly enough by the effect which it instantly 
had upon the minds of the two. men who first saw it when it reached the 
camp—namely, Lord Raglan and Sir George Brown. Lord Raglan’s letter 
of the 19th of July (p. 385) shows clearly that he submitted to act with sol-. 
dierly readiness under instructions which he looked upon as imperative, or, 
at all events, violently cogent ; and Sir George Brown gives his interpreta- 
tion of the Dispatch (p. 381) with a bluntness which precludes all doubt 
about the light in which he regarded it. ‘The Government, he considered, 
were resolved that at all hazards the expedition should proceed ; and if 
Lord Raglan should not consent to lead it, he thought they would instantly 
send out some one else who would. 

It may be said that this sleep of the Cabinet is one of those.things which, 
however true they may be, it is better not to disclose. Certainly no one is 
obliged to go and state a thing thoughtlessly or without a purpose merely 
because it happened. But I have to account for a great transaction—the 
invasion of a Russian province. I ascertain that this invasion was caused, 
and caused entirely, by the peculiar wording of a dispatch. But why was it 
that a dispatch so worded received the approval or the tacit assent of a Cab- 
inet? It would be unfaithful for me to stop short at that point in the chain 
of causation unless I were brought to a stop by the want of knowledge, or by 
the want of a right to disclose what I know. It so happens, however, that 
neither of these excuses is available to me, I know the truth, and I learn- 
ed it under circumstances which gave me a full right to disclose ity 


[var . APPENDIX: 681 


Vir 


CORRESPONDENCE RESPECTING THE PLACING OF THE BUOY BY THE FRENCH 
IN THE NIGHT BETWEEN THE 13TH AND 14TH OF SEPTEMBER. 


First Letter.— Captain Mends on the subject of the Buoy. 


To THE EDITOR OF THE $ TIMES.’ 


Srr,—May I ask the insertion in your columns of the following remarks ? 

As I have been referred to by many as to the truth of Mr. Kinglake’s 
statement, in his ‘Invasion of the Crimea,’ ‘that the landing of our army 
‘at Old Fort was materially delayed by the willful misplacement of a buoy 
‘by the French,’ I feel called upon, in justice to the French naval service, to 
state the facts which came under my own observation ; and here I desire to 
observe that, during two years of very close intercourse with that service, 
their whole conduct, so far from being such as to bring our harmony into 
grievous jeopardy, was that. of chivalrous, loyal allies. 

As Lam the officer who, by the direction of Sir Edmund Lyons, planned the 
whole of the details connected with the embarkation, transfer, and landing 
of the army, ¢t might:suffice for me simply to say that I remember nothing about 
a buoy; that Mr. Bower, the master of the ‘ Agamemnon,’ who conned the 
ship under my orders, remembers nothing about a buoy; and that Captain 
Spratt (who then commanded the ‘ Spitfire,’ and, as the senior surveying 
officer, was usually intrusted with such delicate and important duties) 7re- 
members nothing about a buoy; but I will not take upon myself to state 
positively that there was no buoy in question, as it is not impossible that 
Sir Edmund Lyons may have entered upon a confidential agreement with 
the French Admiral that the duty of placing a buoy on the coast selected 
by the Allied Admirals and Generals during the final reconnaissance on 
the 10th should be kept in the hands of the French, to be laid by them 
during the night preceding the landing, in order to firevent so significant a 
mark of the designed locality becoming known to the enemy ; but it is pass- 
ing strange that Sir Edmund Lyons, in whose confidence I was, and who 
had. intrusted .the whole of the arrangements to me, should have given 
me no instructions relative to it if he attached importance to it. 

The ‘Agamemnon,’ having weighed from Eupatoria at 1 A.M., aecom- 
panied by the ‘Sanspureil,’ ‘ Triton,’ and ‘Spitfire,’ and followed by all the 
transports, was the advance ship, by a long way, of the Allied flotilla. Sir 
Edmund Lyons, in his eager desire to be in the van, pushed on to the 
southward of the beach, behind which lay Lake Kamishli, the southernmost 
of the three lakes marked on the maps, until we arrived off the rocky head- 
land lying between two shallow bays, within which lay the beaches, one 
having Lake Kamishli at the back of it (being that on which the British 
ultimately landed), the other and more southern beach (on which the French 
landed) having no lake behind it, and being circumscribed in its limits. 

When off the Point, Sir Edmund Lyons, who was anxiously scanning the 
coast, desired me to stop the engines; while thus hove-to, with the ship’s 
head brought round to the N.E., or in-shore, the French Admiral, heading 
his fleet, came up, and, passing close to us, hailed to say we were too far to 


* The publication of the above correspondence as an ‘Addendum to the second volume 
takes place with the assent of Captain Mends. For the purpose of indicating passages 
which seem to me to be among the most important in regard to the question of fact, I have 
taken the liberty of causing some portions of Captain Mends's letters to be printed in 


italics, 
Fr? 


682 APPENDIX. VER 


the southward; upon which a conversation ersued between Sir Edmund 
Lyons and the French Admiral from the poops of their respective ships 
until the onward movement of the French ship terminated it, whereupon a 
French naval officer came on board immediately with a message from his 
Admiral to Sir E. Lyons to say that we were too far to the southward, the 
Point off which we then were being the line of demarcation between the 
armies. During this short suspense I called the attention of Sir Edmund 
to the approach of the transports, and pointed out that they would fall 
into confusion if he did not quickly decide upon his anchorage, as the ‘ Spit- 
‘fire’ and ‘ Triton,’ the two steamers told off to anchor as the points within 
which our flotilla had been instructed to bring up, were looking to the 
‘Agamemnon’ for position. Sir Edmund instantly-gave me orders to stcer 
back to the northward of the Point, and close in with the beach as near as 
possible. Meanwhile the ‘Agamemnon’s’ boats had been hoisted out and 
the artillery rafts put together, so that on the moment of anchoring, which 
we did about half-past six, we were ready to commence the operation of 
landing, which Sir E. Lyons desired to do at once; but Sir George Brown, 
who was on board the ‘Agamemnon,’ wished to await the decision of Lord 
Raglan, who was approaching on board the ‘Caradoc.’ The French had by 
this time many men landed, for seeing no prospect of opposition they began 
to disembark as fast as their ships got to the anchorage. As soon as the 
‘Caradoc’ closed, Lord Raglan came on board the ‘Agamemnon,’ and after a 
short consultation Sir Edmund Lyons desired me to make the signal to 
land, and we commenced immediately.* Thus it will be seen that the 
French were the cause of no serious delay, as British transports had never 
arrived at the Point, to the southward of which a buoy is said to have been 
placed. If the choosing of the beach was left in the hands of the French, 
they certainly gave us the advantage of position, our landing-place having 
the lake at the back, and being less circumscribed. 

Had it been decided to land both armies in the bay selected by the 
French, the space on the beach would not have sufficed for the work, and 
serious confusion would have ensued, whilst the anchorage would have been 
too limited for the assembling of so many vessels. 

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
(Signed) W. R. MENDS, Captain, R.N. 


United Service Club, Pall Mall, 
March 18. 


Second Letter.— Mr. Kinglake to Captain Mends. 


12 St. James's Place, April 4, 1863. 

Srr,—I have the honor to enclose an extract from that part of Lord 
Raglan’s private letter to the Secretary of War which relates to the affair 
of ‘the buoy.’ | 

Since the appearance of your letter to the newspaper, you have probably 
received some communications on the subject; and if there be any thing in 
those communications, or in the enclosed extract from Lord Raglan’s letter, 
which is calculated to modify the impression under which you thought it 
your duty to come forward and question my statement, I feel certain that 
you will take the course which your own sense of fairness must dictate. 

I have the honor to be, Sir, your obedient, humble servant, 


(Signed) A. W. KINGLAKE, 
CaprTatn MENDs, R.N., ete., etc., ete. 


* A careful reader will observe that all the movements backward and forward, and the 
conferences here described, are exactly such as might have been expected to occur up n 
the supposition that Lord Raglan'’s account, as given in the next page, is strictly 
accurate. 


VIL.J APPENDIX. 683 


Enclosure accompanying Mr. Kinglake’s letter. 


INVASION OF THE CRIMEA, 
The placing of the Buoy by the French in the night between the 13th and 14th of Septem- 
ber, 1854. 

Captain Mends having stated (in a letter which he thought proper to ad- 
dress to the editor of a newspaper) that he remembers nothing about a 
buoy, it may be convenient for readers of the book which was the subject of 
Captain Mends’s remarks, to have before them the words in which Lord 
Raglan described the transaction. 


Extract from Lord Raglan’s Narrative of the Landing, addressed as a Pri- 
vate Communication to the Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of War, 
_and dated ‘Camp above Old Fort Bay, September 18, 1854.’ 


‘The disembarkation of both armies commenced on the morning of the 
‘14th. 

‘It had been settled that the landing should be effected in Old Fort Bay, 
‘and that a buoy should be placed in the centre of it to mark the left of the 
‘French and the right of the English; but when the ‘‘ Agamemnon” came 
‘upon the buoy at daylight, Sir Edmund Lyons found that the French naval 
‘officer had deposited it on the extreme northern end, and had thus en- 
‘grossed the whole of the bay for the operation of his own army. This oc- 
‘casioned considerable confusion and delay, the English convoy having fol- 
‘lowed closely upon the steps of their leader, and got mixed with the 
‘French transports; but Sir Edmund Lyons wisely resolved to make the 
“best of it, and at once ordered the troops to land in the bay next to the 
‘northward.’ 


Third Letter.*— Captain Mends to Mr. Kinglake. 


3 Broomfield Crescent, Harrow Road, W., 
bth April, 1863. 

Srr,—In reply to your communication of the 4th instant, enclosing an ex- 
tract from Lord Raglan’s private letter to the Secretary of War, which re- 
lates to the affair of the ‘ buoy,’ I have the honor to acquaint you that, since 
writing my letter to the Times of the 18th ult., I have heard nothing 
which is calculated to modify the impression under which I wrote it; for 
though it would seem there was a buoy, and though I differ from Lord Raglan, 
whose memory I so highly respect, I aver that not the slightest inconvenience, 
confusion, or delay, was occasioned to the disembarkation of the British 
by any act of the French: I never heard of the buoy until I saw your 
book ; and I feel satisfied that were Sir Edmund Lyons alive, he would be one 
of the first to do justice to the chivalrous conduct of his colleague, Admiral 
Bruat, whose heart and soul were in the success of the undertaking, and 
whose example was cordially followed by every officer under his command ; 
that, in my opinion, wherever the buoy was placed, none but the most upright 
motives prompted the act, and the most sound practical reasons warranted 
the selection of the spot. 

I have the honor to be, Sir, your obedient humble servant, ‘ 
(Signed) W. R. MENDS. 


A. W. KInGuLAke, Esq., M.P., etc., etc., ete. 
* It seems right to say that this copy has been carefully compared with the original. and 


found to be strictly correct. In the original, the words ‘by any act of the French’ are 
underscored. : : 


684 APPENDIX, VIIL.} 


VIL. 
Note respecting the operations of the 7th Fusileers. 


Written, it would seem, with the help of information deriving from Sir 
George Brown,* the Quarterly Review has this statement :— 

‘While this was going on upon the left of Codrington’s brigade, the 
‘right, consisting of the 33rd and 7th, gallantly attacked the Russian infantry 
‘which protected the battery and the Redan. The battle was not fought, 
‘however, as Mr. Kinglake would have us believe. Lacy Yea and his 
‘gallant Fusileers did just as well, but not one whit better, than Colonel 
‘Blake and his equally gallant 33rd. The personal exploits of Lacy Yea, 
‘Mr. Kinglake’s particular protége, are about as authentic as those of 
‘Homer’s heroes, and so is the long fight maintained by him and his men 
‘against five or six times their number of Russian troops. The two regi- 
‘ments went forward together, Codrington leading them:on.t They drove 
“back the Russians and planted themselves on the brow of the height, from 
‘which the enemy retired ; and they remained there, partially engaged, till 
‘the Russians rallied and advanced to recover the Redan. Symptoms of 
‘unsteadiness then began to show themselves, and no wonder. A mass of 
Russian troops came toward them in front. ‘They saw their’ comrades: 
‘driven out of the Redan upon their left; they distrusted their own ability 
‘to keep the advanced position which they had won, and they wavered, 
‘Sir George Brown observed this from the point where he was, trying to 
‘rally the 19th and 28rd in their retreat: he rode over to the height and did 
‘his best to stop the 33rd and 7th ; but they would not attend to him. It has 
‘been said that a bugle sounding the retreat misled them. For this the 
‘evidence is, to say the least of it, very incomplete; but whether by sound 
‘of bugle or not, they turned round aud moved back, slowly and doggedly, 
‘just as the Grenadier Guards came upon the ground and were formed and 
‘ready for action. 

‘Having opened fo let the 7th and 33rd pass, the Grenadiers re-formed line 
‘and advanced against the Russian columns in their immediate fiont. Sir 
‘George Brown went with the Grenadier Guards.’—‘ Quarterly Review,’ 
No. 226, p. 566. 

Thus, ‘according to Sir George Brown and the Qedet ly, the 7th Fusil- 
eers and the 33rd Regiment advanced side by side up the slope, attacked 
“the Russian. infantry which protected the battery and the Redan,’ and ob- 
tained a temporary success, but then, under pressure of an advancing 
column, ‘ wavered,’ and fell back,—fell back in such a state that, when the 
divisional General tried to stop them, ‘they would not attend to him,’ and, 
continuing to fall back, retreated through the Grenadier Guards. 

On the other hand, my statement. is that Lacy Yea and his 7th Fusileers 
di not move up at all with the rest of the brigade to the line of the Great 
lw .oubt, because, at the very moment of ascending the river’s bank, they 
encountered a he: avy Russian column, with which.they remained long en- 
gaged ; that, at last, they defeated the column ; and that, when they had 
done so, Sir ‘Thomas Troubridge was sent to suggest that the enemy’s re- 
treat should be pressed by an advance of the Grenadier Guards. 

Now, of these perfectly dissimilar accounts, which is the true one? 

Without referring to the means by which (as a sagacious reader will infer) 


* The grounds on which I infer this will be found at the commencement of Note X. post, 
p. 689. 

t+ Tunis was a mistake of Sir George’s. Codrington was not with the 7th Fusileers. He, 
as we saw, led the 23rd, and the other troops with fhem, straight into the redoubt. 


[VIII. APPENDIX. ; 685 


I gathered my first impressions of what the battalion did, I must say, in the 
outset, that at the battle of the Alma Sir Thomas Troubridge was a field- 
officer, on duty with the right wing of the regiment; that, from the be- 
ginning to the end of the engagement between the 7th Fusileers and the 
column, he, Sir Thomas Troubridge, was personally present; that he wit- 
nessed the defeat of the column with his own eyes; that he himself carried 
the message which suggested that the Grenadier Guards should advance in 
pursuit; that he, Sir Thomas Troubridge, is living—is living in London 
and holding office at the Horse-Guards ; and, finally, that he has over and 
over again assured me of the substantial truth of my narrative so far as it 
concerns what he saw of the operations of the 7th Fusileers. 

Colonel Yea did not live to hear it imputed to his 7th Fusileers, —to hear 

it imputed tothem by their divisional General,—that they had given way at 
the sight of an enemy’s column, and had retreated in such a state that they 
‘would not attend to him;’ but some of Lacy Yea’s simple, truthful letters 
have been laid before me. 
- In a letter addressed to Lord Vivian, and dated the 27th of September, 
1854, Lacy Yea describes the passage of the river at the Alma, and then 
writes :—‘I had to deal with the 32nd Regiment*—I should suppose of 
‘some distinction, as they wore Wellington boots, pulled high up over their 
‘trowsers,-and grand-looking helmets, and had kits which were beautiful, 
‘and. which my men eagerly put on; there was not. one of them who 
‘would not have made a front rank for me. One of the men said they had 
‘been marched from Moscow, through Odessa, here. ... . There was 
‘an unlucky check in the 23rd, which caused a similar retrograde in their 
‘supporters, the Fusileer Guards, which cost an enormity of lives in both 
‘regiments, J never stopped until we drove our birds clean off the ground, 
‘having commenced with them after emerging from the deep banks of the 
‘river, within fifteen yards of their skirmishers.’ 

Shortly afterward, Colonel Yea wrote to his sister, Mrs. Cholmley 
' Dering :— 

‘ Jeffries being ordered home suddenly, I take the opportunity of sending 
‘you, to take care of, a helmet ornament belonging to one of the regiments 
‘(Russian) to which my regiment was opposed at Alma. It was the sharp- 
‘shooters belonging to that regiment, which I found within fifteen yards 
‘when I rode up the bank out of the river. We—that is, the 7th—were sole- 
‘ly engaged against this regiment without help, and a pretty thrashing we gave 
‘ them.’ 

_ Colonel Aldworth writes the following letter to Sir Thomas Troubridge :— 


‘May 3, 1863. 

‘My prar Sir THomas,—I write in reply to your inquiry as to w hat oc- 
“curred on the right of the 7th Royal Fusileers at the Battle of the Alma, 

“after crossing the river. 

‘I was, as you know, in command of the right company of the regiment, 
‘and can confidently state that the right wing of the regiment did not at 
‘any time fall back. We were opposed to a heavy Russian column, which 
‘had come down the hill and halted in ow immediate front, throwing out nu- 
“merous skirmishers. The Guards did not pass us until this column had 
“turned, and was in full retreat. I can not say much about the left wing, 
‘having seen but little of it during the engagement, owing to the smoke, and 


‘my position on the extreme right. Yours sincerely, 
(Signed) ‘R. W. ALDWORTH, Col., 
‘Lt.-Col. Commanding ist Battalion 
‘7th Royal Fusileers.’ 


* Two battalions of the Kazan corps. Their accoutrements were marked ‘ 32nd." 


686 APPENDIX. (VIII. 


Of Colonel Aldworth Sir Thomas Troubridge thus writes :—‘ The steadi- 
‘ness with which the men held their ground on the right, under a very 
‘heavy fire, was in great measure due to the example and coolness of this © 
‘ officer.’ 

Nor is it only from the officers of the 7th Fusileers that the proof of what 
the battalion did at the Alma is to be found. ‘The regiment next on the 
right of Colonel Lacy Yea’s Fusileers was the 55th. ‘The 55th was com- 
manded atthe Alma by Colonel, now General, Warren. In a memoran- 
dum by him, now lying before me, there is this passage :— 

‘Sir John [Pennefather] allowed the 55th Regiment to follow Colonel 
‘Warren, who crossed the river and formed the regiment in line under the 
‘cover of a spur of the heights of the Alma, up which they advanced in 
‘line (Major-General Pennefather leading in front the battalion which was 
‘parallel to the Alma); then, having ascended this spur, they formed them- 
‘selves in presence of a column of Russians who fired intothem. ‘This col- 
‘umn of Russians was at that time engaged with a part of the Light Division 
‘under Colonel Yea, and the 55th were directed by their Colonel to bring for- 
‘ward their right shoulders and make a wheel to the left. . . . With 
‘this accession to Colonel Yea’s force, the Russians in a short time disappear- 
‘ed, leaving many on the ground.’ 

A writer, who seems to have inquired a good deal about what was pass. 
ing at the time when Sir George Brown imagined that the 7th Fusileers 
‘would not attend to him,’ has undertaken the somewhat intricate task of 
showing how Sir George Brown fell into his error. He thus writes :— 

‘But we are not only able to free the 7th Fusileers from the effects of Sir 
‘George Brown’s wondrous narrative. ‘We can do more: we can explain to 
‘Sir George Brown how it was that—honestly, quite honestly—he fell into 
‘his error. Mr. Kinglake states that, when the 7th Fusileers had defeated 
‘the left Kazan column, it was not thought wise for the victors to advance 
“in pursuit themselves, but to leave that duty to the Grenadier Guards. 
‘The 7th Fusileers, therefore, at the moment of its victory, remained halted. 
‘Mr. Kinglake also represents that the defeat of this left Kazan column 
‘took place ‘‘ nearly at the very time when disaster befell the centre of the 
‘ “brigade of Guards.” —(Page 567, first edition.) Attention to this, re-en- 
‘forced by information from officers present, soon discloses the cause of Sir 
‘George Brown’s mistake. In their retreat, some of the Fusileer Guards 
‘passed through the left companies of the 7th, and these companies becom- 
‘ing entangled with the defeated soldiery, and having on their left front a 
‘fresh, a heavy, and a victorious column of the enemy’s infantry (the Vladi- 
‘mirs), were far from being in a state for any aggressive movement, and 
‘were in great need of the support which they got when the Grenadiers 
‘passed through them. It was from what he saw there—from what he saw 
‘at the extreme left of the regiment—that Sir George Brown formed the 
‘notion which he has imparted to the Quarterly. If he had ridden along 
‘the line to Lacy Yea’s right wing, he would have seen that, notwithstand- 
‘ing the critical state of its left companies, the regiment (taken as a whole) 
‘was almost in the very moment of achieving its final victory over the left 
‘Kazan column. If he had stooped to the use of a glass, and had conde- 
‘scended to recognize for a moment the existence of one of Evans's bat- 
‘talions, he would have seen the Kazan column slowly retiring, and would 
‘have been surprised to observe that, on ground where he imagined there 
‘were none but his own Light Division regiment, Colonel Warren, with his 
‘55th, was not only well in advance, but had wheeled on his left, and was 
‘pouring his fire into the flank of the enemy’s column. Far from doing 
‘this, and far from informing himself of the truth by subsequent inquiry, 


IX.] APPENDIX. | 6a 


‘Sir George Brown has remained for nearly nine years under the impres- 
‘sion produced on his mind by a glance at the extreme left of the 7th; and 
‘because at this time he saw the 33rd and the 7th close together, and in 
“nearly the same line, he seems to have inferred that from first to last they 
‘had been acting together.’—Pamphlet by an ‘Old Reviewer,’ published by 
Harrison, Pall Mall. 


IX. 


Note respecting the operations of the Scots Fusileer Guards at the Battle of 
the Alma. 


Just as in the corner of a sheet containing the delineation of a whole 
kingdom, some city or district which forms a part of it is often set out upon 
a scale more extended than the one that is used for the principal map, so 
here I am going to record what I judge to be the result of the late discus- 
sion about the Fusileer Guards, by repeating the narrative of their opera- 
tions after passing the Alma, but repeating it with rather more minuteness 
of detail than readers will find in the text. 

We saw that, at the time of passing the river, the left-flank company got 
parted from the rest of the battalion. ‘That separation lasted during the 
period of the struggle which followed ; and when, therefore, in this Note, I 
speak of the Scots Fusileer Guards in general terms, it must be understood 
that I mean to designate that body of seven companies which remained 
together, when the left-flank company had got parted from the rest of the 
battalion. 

At the moment when the troops which had stormed the redoubt began to 
retreat, the Ist Division had not yet emerged from the cover afforded by the 
river’s bank; but General Codrington’s message hurried the advance of the 
Scots Fusileer Guards. The battalion climbed up the bank, formed line 
with a good deal of haste, and began to move forward. 

At this time, there were numbers of stragglers of the Light Division 
standing about near the bank of the river; but in front of the left centre of 
the Fusileer Guards there was a large disordered body (men chiefly, I be- 
lieve, of the 23rd and 95th Regiments), who had just let go their hold of the 
redoubt. These men had faced about to the front, and were firing in the 
direction of the great column of the Vladimir corps then halted within the 
redoubt. The moment the heads of the Fusileer Guards rose clear of the 
ground which till then had been giving them shelter, the men found them- 
selves under a flight of the enemy’s missiles, and the higher they marched, 
the more they incurred the fire which seemed to be directed against the 
light-infantry men in their front. Many of the Fusileer Guards were struck 
down. Still, their onward movement was maintained. 

Suddenly, the parapet of the redoubt became thickly lined with Russian 
soldiery ; and, in the next instant, the fire of the enemy’s musketry came 
heavily pouring down into the confused body of light- infantry men who had 
been hitherto making a stand in front of the Fusileer Guards. The crowd 
of light-infantry men which received this fire gave way; and in another in- 
stant it was coming down in a mass toward the left centre of the Fusileer 
Guards. Perhaps thé haste with which the Fusileer Guards had been 
pushed forward was one of the causes which hindered them from meeting 
the emergency by a fitting manceuvre. It does not appear that any step 
was taken to make the battalion open out. So, presently, the descending 


eee | APPENDIX. rx. 


crowd came into bodily contact with the Fusileer Guards; and this so 
heavily, that the crowd broke through a great part of the left wing of the 
advancing battalion. The weight of the retreating throng at that one spot 
was so great and so unwieldly, that a soldier of the Scots Fusileer Guards 
was thrown, it is said, to the ground with such force as to break his ribs. 
The part of the Scots Fusileer Guards which had thus been thrust out of 
line by physical pressure was, of course, in a state of confusion. 

The remnant of the battalion thus maimed was, at the moment, without 
support; for, directly in its rear, there were no formed troops coming on; 
and of the two battalions on its right hand and its left, neither one nor the 
other had hitherto-come up abreast of it. On the other hand, the force 
which our Fusileer Guards undertook to attack was that majestic Vladimir 
column which had just been defeating Sir George Brown. With a strength 
of no more than perhaps some four or five hundred men, the remnant of 
what had been the centre battalion of the brigade of Guards was advancing 
all alone, not merely against a breastwork thick lined with Russian sol- 
diery, but also against a hitherto victorious column which was nearly 3000 
strong. Still, the maimed battalion pushed on; but by this time it had so 
far lost its symmetry that it had come to be, as it were, two sides of a tri- 
angle—two sides of a triangle whereof the salient pointed straight to the 
front. At the foremost point or apex thus formed, Lindsay was carrying 
the Queen’s color; and it would seem that the swiftness of his onward 
movement, and the eagerness of those who were near him to keep up with 
the color, may have been the cause which refracted the line. There was a 
good deal of impetuosity at this time, and it would seem that the concep- 
tion of what was the needful thing to do was—not so much to labor after the 
restoration of complete order, but rather—to carry the redoubt, and break 
down the great column by a rush; for in the midst of such shouts as ‘ For- 
‘ward, Guards! Forward, Guards !’—Hugh Annesley was heard cheering 
thus—the bent and irregular line pressed on; and in a few moments it had 
got so far up the slope as to be within some thirty or forty yards of the 
work. Then numbers of the Russians burst out over the parapet, and some, 
it is said, came straight on, with their bayonets down ‘at the charge.’ The 
Queen’s color was in danger; for it was not to be imagined that these few 
companies of the Fusileer Guards could maintain themselves long against 
the overwhelming weight of the column in their front. But the immediate 
cause which brought about the retreat was, after all, the word of command. 
I believe that the order to retire which was now about to reach the bat- 
talion was given by the authority of General Henry Bentinck, the officer 
commanding the brigade. It was delivered to the line by the Adjutant of 
the Fusileer Guards. With pistol in hand—for some of the Russian sol- 
diery were coming close down—Drummond, the Adjutant of the battalion, 
rode up, and gave the order to retire. By these words, as I gather, the 
battalion was stopped ; but it did not instantly obey the command to retire. 
There was a reluctance to fall back; and it would seem that the feeling 
which caused this reluctance was not altogether a false instinct ; for, how- 
ever imperative the necessity for retreating may have been, the order had 
come too late to avert the impending disaster; and it is likely enough that, 
being, as they were, in the close presence of a powerful enemy, our men 
may have fancied there must needs be some mistake in an order which di- 
rected them to go about at a moment when no due arrangements had been 
made for covering the retreat. Be this as it may, the Adjutant (as it was 
his duty to do) repeated the order. It seems he repeated it thrice; and the 
last time he was no longer content to say, ‘ The battalion will retire!’ for 
he told it with force that it ‘ must.’ 


1X1] APPENDIX. 689 


I know of no means that were taken for covering the retreat. If any 
were tried, they failed; for, the moment the battalion obeyed the word of 
command, it lapsed into a state of disorder, and then fell back in confusion. 
Seeing this, the soldiery thrown out by the Russians in advance of their 
great column pushed forward with increasing boldness, and the Queen’s 
color was now in greater danger than ever. But borne by a resolute offi- 
cer, and surrounded by resolute men, it was guarded with care to the last, 
and kept safe from the enemy’s touch.* At one moment, the foremost of 
the assailants were so close, that a soldier of the Fusileer Guards received a 
wound in the hand from a bayonet. It was then that. the Fusileer Guards 
suffered the chief part of their losses.t By its retreat, the battalion seemed, 
as it were, to draw the enemy forward; for the great Vladimir column, 
which had hitherto stood halted within the redoubt, now broke out over the 
parapet, and began to glide down the slope. For a little while, the column 
went on in pursuit; but then (as is shown in the text) it was checked, and 
brought to a halt by the advance of the Grenadier Guards, 

For some time a great part of the Fusileer Guards remained in confu- 
sion on the lower part of the slope; but Dalrymple’s, and also, I think, 
Jocelyn’s companies, were rallied so quickly as to be enabled to partake of 
the fight which engaged the Grenadier Guards ; and, before long, the main 
part of the battalion had not only been re-formed in advance of the road 
running parallel with the river, but was briskly resuming its place in the 
centre of the brigade of Guards.t 


*Tt was for his resolute defense of the color at this juncture that Lindsay received the 
Victoria Cross. 

+ The casualties are given in the text ; but (because the statement tends to confirm, in 
some points, the accountI have given) I will here show the number of casualties which oc- 
curred among the non-commissioned officers and men of each company : 


No. 1 Company....... ne Be alte orare Feira, Bul the (ola debs SR TURIN A Brain rcidk ds 18 
No. 2 MO erties « asad ee We dh emid tan sede Realeh a Mu ersatatr hy é 4 basin: & snp ee 
No. 3 Od ae tsala hs onic EE Rt Rane din: seat PN Rey ea Pe 1T 
No. 4 GOQe geet cls Ce oes cates Raker cee co ware pied cts rea el fer 23 
No. 5 COEF TUE Se eee eee Pee ARS uo Uiels Seats Re aoa dod 4 eds 
No. 6 Os. & Pe.) ast ih athe. SARVOES seieianths bodies pe were % s She ne 
No. 7 7a See Cee Oe b cuia insisted au agatha 4.4,0,87> Seca 6 Sasa ta toe BE ee 19 
No. 8 Ce RG OY ars a feretat et Mtrcahevara alas Ome dae wrens es "ated ee stalGre 6 


tIt would seem as though this were meant to be denied by the journal which follows Sir 
George Brown's impressions; for the Quarterly Review has these words :—‘ The Fusileer 
‘Guards rushed forward to take the Redan, but failed. Some of them got up to the parapet 
‘and clung to it, but not a man entered the work, while the great body, retreating, got in- 
‘termixed with the 23rd Regiment, along with whom they lay down behind the broken 
‘bank, from which it was found impossible for a considerable space of time to move them.’ 
And also: ‘The Coldstreams took their plac on the left of the Grenadiers’ [the place prop- - 
erly belonging to the Scots Fusileers], ‘and shared in the battle. But the battle was already 
dying out.’—No, 226, p.567. I can hardly imagine that the statement really intended to 
be made is such as the words seem to import; and until it is repeated in plainer terms, and 
supported by the testimony of some officer present at the time, I need not, I think, do more 
than say that, according to the Report of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, the Scots Fusileer 
Guards re-formed ‘ with the greatest alacrity’ (Holograph Report by H.R.H., now lying he- 
fore me); and that, according to the Report of General Henry Bentinck (Holograph Report, 
also before me), the battalion, after having ‘ retired for a short time, re-formed, and returne 


¢ed to its post.’ 


690 APPENDIX. [X. 


iG 


Note respecting the theory that it was Sir George Brown who caused the Gren- 
adier Guards to enter the Great Redoubt at the Alma. 


It would be perverse to disturb the wholesome privilege of anonymous 
publication by saying in print, and on the faith of common rumor, or even 
of sound external evidence, that such or such a paper was written by such 
or such aman. But, in order to the enjoyment of the privilege, the writing 
must not be so worded as to force the reader to perceive its source. It 
must not show by its tenor that it comes from any given man. ‘The mo- 
ment it does so, it speaks with all the weight of the informant whose guid- 
ance it discloses, and then, of course, the shield being dropped, people may 
either bend under the authority of the personage thus thrust upon the pub- 
lic attention, or else take leave to deal with him as though he were the 
avowed author of assertions which are nominally, not really, anonymous. 

Now the Quarterly Review has given so minute an account of where 
Sir George Brown was riding on the day of the Alma, and of what he saw, 
and of how he reasoned, and of how he conferred, and how he advised, that 
an uninspired writer could hardly have learned so much unless he derived 
his knowledge with more or less directness from Sir George Brown himself. 
Either, therefore, such an account must be a fiction, or else it must be based 
upon instructions directly or indirectly obtained from Sir George Brown; 
and, the notion of treating it as a fiction being forbidden by the respecta- 
ble character of the publication, it follows that the Quarterly’s account of 
Sir George Brown’s actions comes upon the world with all the weight and 
authority of Sir George Brown himself. 

Again, and still without listening to a word of rumor, I can produce a 
clew which shall very soon trace to Sir George Brown one of the most strik- 
ing of the assertions put forward by the Quarterly Review. In flat con- 
tradiction to the written narratives of’Lord Raglan, of General Evans, and 
of General Pennefather, and setting at naught the belief which I conceive 
to be unquestioned in the whole English army by any number greater than 
one, the Quarterly Review has undertaken to say that Sir George Brown, 
with Codrington’s brigade, ‘ filled the whole mouth of the Pass extending 
‘on both sides of the Eupatoria road,’—in other words, that it filled the whole 
of that very ground on which the world believed that—not Brown, but—- 
- Evans, with Pennefather’s brigade, had fought a hard fight. 

Now perhaps we might get at the authority which supported the Re- 
viewers in making this strange assertion, if only we could find out the name 
of the man in the English army who sincerely believed it to be true. I 
can help the search. It so happens that that very notion of Sir George 
Brown’s having filled the whole mouth of the Pass with his Ist brigade 
was entertained by Sir George Brown himself. It was one of the most 
curicus and interesting parts of the dream that was dreamed by Sir George 
on the day of the Alma. That he did truly believe this (incredible as it 
may seem) I know from his own official, but hitherto unpublished, Report 
now lying before me, in his own handwriting, and dated the 23rd of Sep- 
tember, 1854. The very belief so strangely entertained by Sir George 
Brown in September, 1854, is not only adopted in its entirety by the writer 
of April, 1863, but is repeated in almost the same words. ‘The two state- 
ments shall stand side by side :-~ 


[X. | APPENDIX. - 691 


Sm GEORGE Brown. Tne ‘ QUARTERLY REVIEW.’ 


*My first brigade itself [Codrington’s bri- ‘General Codrington’s brigade (the right 
gade] ‘completely filled the whole mouth of ‘ brigade of the Light Division) filled the whole 
‘the gorge or valley through which the road ‘mouth of the Pass, extending on both sides 
‘runs,’—MS8. unpublished Report of 23rd Sep- ‘ofthe Eupatoria road.’—‘ Quarterly Review,’ 
tember, 1854, in the handwriting of Sir George No, 226, p. 550. 

Brown. ; 


Even if that curious statement by Sir George Brown had chanced to be 
one that can be assented to by mankind in general, the recurrence of it in 
words so closely similar to his would have warranted a surmise that the two 
sentences may have had a common origin; but supposing it to appear that 
the statement first made and afterward recurring was a sheer mistake, sur- 
mise would change into proof. If an author were to state in his book that 
the Allies at Waterloo were commanded by the Duke of Wellington, ‘io one 
would be able to detect in such an assertion the guidance of another man’s 
mind, because tlic similarity of the statement to any older one of the same 
import is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that both are true; but if we 
were to find an old number of the Quarterly Review asserting, and assert- 
ing in earnest, that the Allies at Waterloo were commanded by the Prince 
Regent of England in person, we should instantly see that, whoever might 
be the nominal propounder of such a statement, its real and virtual author 
was the late King George the Fourth—the one man who believed it to be 
true. So, when it is remembered that this statement of Sir George Brown’s 
is very wide of what other people believe, the adoption of the belief in a later 
writing gives proof, irresistibly cogent, that both statements were the off- 
spring of the same honest, erring mind. 

I must add, that even if Sir George Brown had been able to say that he 
never made any direct communication to any body at all connected with the 
Quarterly Review, his assertion, though carrying, of course, the most per- 
fect conviction of its truth, would still fall short of what is needed for dis- 
entangling him; because it so happens that, before the publication of the 
Review, Sir George Brown thought it right to circulate a MS. (authenti- 
cated by his initials) in which he gave his version of the part he sincerely 
believed he had taken in the Battle of the Alma. Sir George can not know, 
nor even, perhaps, believe, that the MS. thus circulating did not fall into the 
hands of an admirer, who saw in it a treasure of historic proof, took it 
straight to the managers of the Quarterly Review, and caused them to 
fancy it must be accurate by showing that it was really genuine. 3 

Thus, then, I am obliged to connect Sir George Brown with the account 
which is given of his actions in the Quarterly Review. For some little 
time, indeed, after the appearance of the Reviewers’ narrative, it seemed 
possible that something might be written or said which would relieve me 
from the necessity of treating Sir George Brown as the person to be refuted. 
Sir George, one imagined, might perhaps take some means of declaring that 
the Reviewers had made an inaccurate use of their instructions. But time 
has rolled on; and at length it can be said (in defense of the Review, 
though in aggravation of the responsibility which is attaching upon Sir 
George Brown), that Sir George has allowed three months to pass away 
without publicly repudiating the curious statement which his organ lately 
gave to the world. Of course, a man is not in general to be held answera- 
ble for acquiescing in the accounts which strangers, deriving no information 
from himself, may choose to give of his actions ; but I have shown, I think, 
that Sir George and the Quarterly can not stand thus clear asunder; and 
when we find, first, that Sir George Brown has circulated a MS. containing 
an account of what he imagines he saw, and what he imagines he did, at 


692 APPENDIX. (x. 


the Battle of the Alma; next, that one of the mistaken statements adopted 
by the Revzew was addressed by Sir George Brown in his own handwrit- 
ing to the English head-quarters; next, that the Aeview (a publication of 
unimpeached respectability) is so worded as to all but disclose its informant ; 
next, that having thus displayed its title to be deemed authentic, the Re- 
view proceeds to attribute to Sir George Brown a series of striking achieve- 
ments; and that, finally, after an interval of three months, Sir George 
Brown allows a fresh number of the Review to appear without a word of 
disavowal or modest remonstrance,* then, I think, we can hardly fail to see 
that the narrative given by the Review acquires the kind of interest which 
belongs to autobiography. We recur to the pages ; and whenever we can 
find the name of ‘Sir George Brown,’ we put in: before it the significant 
‘Ego,’ which gives an interesting, nay, an almost humorous, authenticity to 
the whole story. Whether the story be true or not, that is another ques- 
tion; and, to solve it, one may be obliged to°compare Sir George Brown’s 
impressions (as indeed shall be presently done) with the impressions of other 
people; but until Sir George Brown shall come forward and impute to the 
journal which reproduces his ideas an erroneous use of the information sup- 
plied to it, one is warranted in attributing the kind of authenticity above 
pointed out to every thing concerning Sir George which the Quarterly Re- 
view has narrated. Add to this great merit of ‘authenticity’ the well- 
known fact that Sir George Brown’s honor and truthful intent are above 
the reach of all cavil, and then we come to understand the kind of interest 
which attaches to the Reviewers’ story. Then, as we light upon each shin- 
ing deed ascribed to Sir George Brown, we are able to say,—‘ This is in 

‘deed curious. True or not, here is a story which is really believed to be 
‘true by the very officer—a General of Division—who is represented to have 
‘been the principal actor—nay, rather, to have been the almost sole actor— 
‘in these stirring scenes. No doubt this is all very new. No doubt there 
“are many who think that Lord Raglan, the Commander of the Forces, had 
‘something to do with governing the issue of the battle. Perhaps, also, 
‘General Evans may still persist in maintaining that he existed on the day 
‘of the Alma; nay, that he fought a hard fight on that day, and lost the 
‘fourth of a brigade upon ground which Sir George Brown declares to have 
‘been wholly occupied by himself.t Again, the 7th Fusileers may main- 
‘tain that, almost at the moment when, according to the recipient of Sir 
‘George Brown’s ideas, they neglected to “ attend to’’ Sir George, t and, on 
‘the contrary, ‘turned round and moved back,”’§ they (the 7th Fusileers) 
‘were not only standing fast, but were in the very act of defeating a Rus- 
‘sian column. Again, those who knew the worth of Colonel Hood may im- 
‘agine that, in the crisis of the fight, he and his Grenadier Guards must 
“have known how to find the redoubt without the guidance or ‘ request” || 


* This circumstance leads me to infer that the Reviewers may have followed Sir George's 
instructions with a more confiding exactness than I ventured to believe probable when I 
wrote the foot-note at p. 588 (See Notes to Fourth Edition). 

+‘ My Ist brigade itself completely filled the whole mouth of the gorge or valley through 
‘which the road runs.’—(Holograph Report, now before me, by Sir George Brown.) The 
ground thus deseribed as * completely filled’ by Sir George’s troops was exactly that on 
which Evans was operating with Pennefather’s brigade. In this Holograph Report of the 
22nd of September, 1854, Evans says that he operated with four of his regiments and one 
of his batteries ‘ to the left of the conflagration, to endeavor to force by that direction the 
‘passage of the river and the bridge ;? and Lord Raglan, in his published Report, spoke of 
Pennefather’s brigade as ‘ connected with the viaht of the Light Division, an expression 
which exactly confirms Evans's statement. General Pennefather writes to the same effect, 
So does General Warren. I never heard the name of any man except Sir George Brown 
who imagined that his, Sir George's, right brigade ‘ filled the whole mouth of the gorge.’ — 

t Qu uv terly Review, No. 2-6, p. 566. § Ibid. i Ibid. p. 567, 


X.] | APPENDIX. 693 


‘of Sir George Brown. Yet again, the friends of the Duke of Cambridge 
‘may continue to think that His Royal Highness brought up the Cold- 
‘stream from the river’s bank a good bit before the ** dying out’ of the 
‘battle,* and that he did this without waiting to be “briefly conferred 
‘¢with’+ by Sir George Brown. Yet again, the Scots Fusileer Guards 
‘may deny that ‘*‘ they lay down behind the broken bank, from which it 
‘ ‘¢ was found impossible, for a considerable space of time, to remove them,” 
‘and may maintain that, even if Sir George Brown did really assume the 
‘ syactical command of the Guards by ‘‘ requesting’ and “‘ briefly confer- 
‘ - ring,’ he could not have placed the Coldstream in the interval ‘‘ on the 
‘+-left of the Grenadiers,’’t because (after the temporary check which they 
‘had undergone) they, the Scots Fusileer Guards, were swift to resume their 
‘place in the centre of the brigade. Finally, the men of the Highland 
‘ Brigade may maintain that, instead of coming up only ‘‘just in time” to 
‘see the Russians ‘‘in full flight,”§ they did really engage in that ‘‘ stub- 
‘* born” contest with the enemy’s columns, which their chief, Sir Colin 
‘Campbell, described and officially reported the second day after the battle.|| 
‘People may say all these things. They may labor to maintain that Sir 
‘George Brown must have been mistaken, and that he could not have really 
‘performed the achievements which his admiring Quarterly attributes to 
‘him; but whether Sir George performed them or not, there remains this 
‘curious and interesting fact—he sincerely believes that he did.’ 

Such being the kind of interest, if not actual importance, which attaches 
to the account of the battle as given in the Quarterly Review, it would 
seem that, at worst, I am erring on the safe side when I not only treat it as 
serious; but quote, and refute its statements. 

But now for the passage which is to be the special subject of comment in 
this Note. After having stated (in a passage before quoted, Appendix, Note 
VIII.) that two of the regiments of Sir George Brown’s Division persisted in 
retreating, notwithstanding Sir George’s efforts to prevent them, also that 
they would not ‘attend to him,’ and that they ‘turned round and: moved 
‘back’**—the Review gocs on:—‘ Having opened to let the 7th and 38rd 
‘pass, the Grenadiers re-formed line, and advanced against the Russian 
“columns in their immediate front. Sir George Brown went with the Gren- 
‘adier Guards ; and when they arrived abreast of Redan, he requested the 
* commander of the battalion to detach a party from his left and to reoccupy that 
‘work.’ 

Now, Sir George Brown commanded the Light Division—the Division 
which, under his guidance, had bad the misfortune to be defeated ;ft and he 
had no authority over the Grenadiers, or any other of the regiments belong- 
ing to the Ist Division. Yet the theory is, that -Sir George abandoned his 
troops—troops said to be in such a state that they ‘would not attend to 
‘him’—and that, joining himself to a regiment with which he had nothing 
to do, and imagining his judgment to be more sound or. more swift than 
that of Colonel Hood (Colonel Hood was one of the very ablest of the offi- 
cers then serving with the English army), he took upon himself to ‘request’ 
the Colonel to reoccupy the redoubt. ‘This story, of course, supposes that, 


* Quarterly Review, No. 226, p. 567. 

t Ibid.; and see the next Note (VI.) of this Appendix. 

t Quarterly Review, No. 226, p. 567. § Ibid. 

|| MS. Report now before me, signed ‘ C. Campbell.’ : 

** Quarterly Review, No. 226, p. 566. 

tt The only regiment of Sir George Brown’s which did not undergo defeat was the Tth 
Fusileers, and Sir George had so little to do with the victorious. fight which rendered the 
fate of that regiment an exception to the fate of the Division, that until this summer he 
did not even believe in it; and but for me, I imagine, he would har dly have known it now. 


694 APPENDIX. X.] 


taken as a body, the battalion of the Grenadier Guards moved up in a direc- 
tion which’brought it clear of the redoubt, and that it continued its advance 
without marching through the work ; for, otherwise, it could not have been 
said that the recapture of the redoubt was effected by a request ‘to detach a 

‘party’ forthe purpose. So, if I show that the advancing battalion marched 
up right through the redonbt, there at once is an end of the story which 
seeks to mutilate my account of Colonel Hood’s achievement by ascribing 
the recapture of the work to Sir George Brown. 

Now, as it happens, I can not only prove that the advancing line of the 
Grenadier Guards marched bodily through the redoubt, but am even en- 
abled to show the exact point in the line of the battalion which impinged 
upon the howitzer then remaining within the work. Writing on another 
question, and before this theory about Sir George Brown and the redoubt 
had been propounded to the world, Colonel Percy (who commanded at the 
Alma the left-flank company of the Grenadier Guards) addressed to me a 
letter, of which the following is an extract :— 

‘With regard to the gun in the redoubt, the right of the 8th company and 
‘ the left of the 7th company, in advancing, were exactly opposite to the gun. I 
‘halted my men about five paces off the rampart for fear of there being 

‘some mine, [and] clambered over, aiding myself by the gun. Colonel 
‘Pakenham, since killed, clambered over at the same moment, and scratch- 
‘ed the number of the company (No. 7) on the carriage with his sword, say- 
‘ing to me afterward (almost directly) ‘‘that he had done so that the gun 
‘**might not be claimed by others.” I replied, ‘‘I wished I had thought 
‘ “of doing so too.”” As the Russians had left the gun after the repulse of | 
‘the first line, the gun was clearly the prize of the Grenadier Guards.’ 

Again, Sir Charles Russell was another of the officers of the Grenadier 
Guards who was with the left-flank company of the battalion; and I find 
that, in the admirably clear private journal which he has been so kind as to 
intrust to me, there is contained this passage:—‘ The gallant Light Di- 
‘vision, quite cut up, were falling back upon us, and impeding our fire, 
‘but still we moved steadily toward the battery. The Fusileers on our left 

‘received a partial check, and (the colors and a few men of the 95th having 
‘formed on our left) we entered the battery close to the brass gun, and poor 
* Pakenham made a mark on it as he passed.* We still pushed on, and it was 
‘not till the hurried retreat of the enemy put them beyond the reach of our 
‘ Miniés, that we halted. ‘Too much can not be said of Colonel Hood’s gal- 
‘lantry ; and by his admirable coolness and unerring judgment he took his 
‘ regiment through action as few have done.’ 

These narratives of Colonel Percy and Sir Charles Russell are sebounts 
—not of what happened te any detached ‘ party.’ but—of the advance of 
that superb and unbroken line of the Grenadier Guards, whereof their com- 
pany formed the left ;+ and unless these two officers were under some de- 
lusion,—some delusion strangely common to both—nay, common, I am sure, 
to every survivor of the battalion,—the notion of Sir George Brown’s having 
recaptured the redoubt, by causing Colonel Hood to ‘detach a party’ for the 
purpose, must be looked upon, either as the mistake of Reviewers straying 
loose from Sir George’s guidance, though their words all but purport to fol- 
low it, or else as the genuine production of a mind much confused, which 
refracted the lights it received, and connected its impressions of what went 
on at the Alma with wrong people, wrong times, and wrong places. 


* Pakenham, as we before saw, was with the 7th Company. 

t Sir Charles Russell has been so good as to assure me once again, both orally and in 
writing, that at the Alma the line of the Grenadier Guards ‘was never broken, either by 
* detaching companies or otherwise.’ 


[XI. APPENDIX. 695 


I will add (though, after the proofs I have given, it is hardly worth while 
to do so), that neither in Colonel Hood’s private journal, nor in any of his 
letters known to his family, is there any, the least, mention either of his hav- 
ing received any ‘ request’ or other communication from Sir George Brown, 
or of his having recaptured the redoubt by detaching ‘a party’ for the pur- 
pose. 

Of course, when one sees a man of Sir George Brown’s unquestioned 
honor and truthfulness submitting to have it said of him—and that by what 
would seem to be his own chosen organ of publicity—that it was he who 
taught Colonel Hood and his Grenadier Guards the way to retake the re- 
doubt, one strains after some counter-theory that will account for an honest 
mistake. ‘The very best counter-theory I can frame for the purpose has the 
fault of being weak and far-fetched ; but, weak and far-fetched as it is, I 
offer it to the attention of Sir George Brown. 

Long after the recapture of the redoubt, and when the Grenadier Guards 
were far in advance of the work, it occurred to some officers in the regiment’ 
(who were anxious that their corps should not lose its fairly-won trophy) to 
send back a man—not a ‘ party’—with directions to stand sentry over the 
brass howitzer then remaining within the redoubt. After a moment’s hes- 
itation, Colonel Hood acceded to the suggestion, and a man—he volunteer- 
ed for the service—went back and stood sentry over the howitzer. 

Now, supposing that Sir George Brown imagined the redoubt to be before 
him instead of behind him; that, being unacquainted with the actual state 
of the battle, he believed the already recaptured redoubt to be still awaiting 
recapture ; and, finally, that he was anxious to put Colonel Hood in the 
way of effecting an operation which had been performed some minutes be- 
fore—then the fact of a man having been really sent back to look after the 
howitzer, and so, in a sense, to ‘reoccupy’ the empty redoubt, would be 
enough to supply that small element of truth which is conducive—nay, al- 
most necessary—to the growth of a modern fable. . 

Be this as it may, I must persist in asking my countrymen to believe that 
the recapture of the Great Redoubt was effected—not by a ‘ party’ detached 
from Colonel Hood’s regiment at the ‘ request’ of Sir George Brown, but— 
by a self-sufficing chief and an undivided battalion—by Colonel Hood, ad- 
vancing in person at the head of his Grenadier Guards. 


XI. 


Note respecting the statement in the text that ‘ the Duke of Cambridge, riding 
‘up with the Coldstream, stood Master of the Great Redoubt.’ 


- I conceived that the above sentence was a fair and not untruthful use of 
language, partly because H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge commanded the 
Division to which the Grenadier Guards belonged, but partly also because I 
believed that the ‘ Coldstream’ (with which His Royal Highness was person- 
ally present) had marched‘ up to the redoubt—not quite simultaneously with 
the Grenadiers, yet—so soon after them that the advance of these two bat- 
talions of the Guards might: be fairly regarded as one movement. But 
armed, as they would make it appear, with information which must needs 
come from Sir George Brown, and unchecked as yet by any public com- 
plaints against their accuracy on the part of Sir George, the conductors of 
the Quarterly Review are still leaving unretracted the narrative which. 


696 APPENDIX. | XL 


they gave to the world more than three months ago. In it there is this 
paragraph :— 

‘Having opened to let the 7th and 33rd pass, the Grenadiers re-formed 
‘line and advanced against the Russian columns in their immediate front. 
‘Sir George Brown went with the Grenadier Guards ; and when they ar- 
‘rived abreast of the Redan, he requested the commander of the battalion 
‘to detach a party from his left and to reoccupy that work. There was no 
‘risk in this; neither could the flank of the Grenadiers be said at this 
‘juncture to be exposed, because the men of the Light Division, who had 
‘been driven out of the Redan, were lying in an irregular line with the 
‘Fusileer Guards under the bank, and kept up such a heavy fire on the 
‘space between themselves and the work as compelled the enemy’s masses, 
‘which had occupied the work, to halt, and finally to withdraw. Protected 
‘on the left by this fire, the Grenadiers moved forward, till, having crossed 
‘the swell of ground from which Codrington’s brigade had retreated, they 
‘found themselves confronted by the Russian columns. Upon these they 
“opened such an effective and well-sustained fire as soon told. The enemy 
‘wavered and gave ground; but in proportion as the Grenadiers pressed 
‘upon them, their own flank became exposed, and they were in danger of 
‘ getting involved in a contest single-handed with a very superior force of 
‘the enemy. Seeing this, Sir George Brown rode back across the front of 
‘the Redan, and, rounding the corner of the hill, came upon the Coldstream 
‘ Guards in line and under the steep ground, and with their right somewhat 
‘thrown forward. He conferred briefly with the Duke of Cambridge and 
‘General Bentinck, both of whom were beside the Coldstreams, and the whole 
“immediately advanced. The Coldstreams took their place on the left of the 
‘Grenadiers and shared in the battle. But the battle was already dying out. 
‘The Grenadiers had carried all before them; the Redan was empty; and, 
‘ stealing away in a direction to their own right, the Russian columns were tn full 
‘ retreat.’ 

_ Now, if it were really to be proved to me that, after the time when the 
Grenadier Guards were abreast of the redoubt, the Duke of Cambridge, with 
the Coldstream, was still down below, under the steep ground near the 
river, and that there he and the Coldstream remained until a general offi- 
cer, who had already been up with the Grenadiers abreast of the redoubt 
(and who had already provided for the reoccupying of the ‘ work’ by a de- 
tached party), was able to ride back, to pass ‘across the front of the Redan,’ 
to ‘round the corner of the hill,’ to come at last to the Coldstream as they 
stood ranged ‘under the steep ground,’ and there to confer ‘ briefly’ with 
H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge and General Henry Bentinck ; finally, if it 
were to be proved to me that the advance of the Duke of Cambridge and 
the Coldstream was the result of the ‘ brief’ conference thus held, and that, 
by that time, the battle was already ‘dying out,’ the redoubt ‘ empty,’ and 
the Russian columns ‘ stealing away’ ‘in full retreat,’—then indeed I should 
be forced to qualify the words by which I ventured to connect the Cold- 
stream and the name of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge with 
those moments of actual strife and glory which preceded the time of mere 
triumph. 

ce happily I conceive that I am not yet brought to this; and I will say 
why 

In the first place, the Quarterly’s narrative of what Sir George Brown 
did at the Alma has not been expressly adopted by Sir George; and al- 
though, I fear, I must grant, both that Sir George Brown was the founder 
of the singular creed which inspired a part of the narrative, and that, after 
an interval of more than three months, he has not yet publicly disavowed 


XII. APPENDIX. 697 


the achievements which it attributes to him, still it is yet possible that when 
Sir George shall see all the bearings of the account which describes his ac- 
tions, he will hold it his duty to come forward and correct the story. 

- But, in the next place, I have to say that, even if Sir George Brown 
shall do the reverse of this, and shall actually ‘undertake to ratify all that 
ethe Review has said of him, he will be ratifying a narrative which I have 
shown to be wild as a dream i in five of its chief‘assertions, and which there- 
fore is likely enough to prove equally wild in this one. 

For the present, however, I do not undertake to refute this curious ac- 

count of the spot where Sir George Brown (on his return from the recap- 
ture of the redoubt) is represented to have found the Duke of Cambridge, 
General Henry Bentinck, and the Coldstream Guards. I leave this story 
to be dealt with by those who can speak from their personal knowledge of 
the state to which the battle had got when Sir George Brown is stated to 
have ridden back from abreast of the redoubt, and to have held the brief 
conference which was followed by the advance of the Coldstream. To 
what may be addressed to me, whether for or against the story, I shall listen, 
I hope, with due care; but in the mean time, and until the account shall be 
confirmed, I must decline to cut down the words by which I assign to the 
Duke of Cambridge and the Coldstream—not a mere share in a battle ‘al- 
* ready dying out,’ but—a real and timely participation in the ‘ brilliant ad- 
‘vance’ of the Guards.* 
_ This is the last of the Notes elicited by the narrative of the Alma con- 
tained in the Quarterly Review. If Sir George Brown shall say that he 
has made no written nor oral communication about the Alma to any body 
connected as a contributor or otherwise with the Quarterly Review, and 
that he has never circulated a MS. which could have furnished ingredients 
for the publication, then I will gladly unsay every word which tends to 
connect him with the narrative contained in the Review. In the mean 
time, however, the narrative given in the Review is speaking, as it were; 
with what seems to be the transparent authority of Sir George Brown ; and, 
this being so, I must for the present permit myself to regard Sir George as 
an officer who has connected himself (in the way I have indicated) with the 
periodical press. Sir George Brown has taken part in gainsaying my ac- 
count of the Alma, and is now in turn doing me the henor to sit and un- 
dergo a few comments. 


XII. 


Note respecting the order of time in which certain events occurred at the Battle 
of the Alma. 


It may be remembered that when Sir Thomas Troubridge had just deliv- 
ered the message which was followed by the immediate advance of the Gren- 
adier Guards, he met Sir George Brown, and from him received his direc- 
tions as to the course to be taken by the 7th Fusileers. Now it happened 
that, while Troubridge was still in conversation with Sir George Brown, 
he observed that a movement was taking effect on the Telegraph Height ; 
‘and, drawing out his field-glass, he presently saw the left of the French 
army moving fairly up toward the Telegraph. The fact of his seeing this at 


* In his published dispatch, Lord Raglan calls the movement ‘a brilliant advance of the 
* brigade of Foot-Guards under Major-General Bentinck.’ 


Vou. L—G « 


698 APPENDIX. (XIII. 


the time of his interview with Sir George Brown has happily fixed the ex- 
act point which had been reached by the progress of events in the English 
part of the field at the moment when the French army made good its ad- 
vance from the cover of the steep hill-sides to the smooth plateau above. © It 
has shown in a summary way-—and the conclusion exactly agrees with in- 
ferences deducible from other grounds—it has shown that the advance of, 
the French to the smooth platean leading up to the Telegraph was after the 
storming and the dismantling of the Great Redoubt; was after the with- 
drawal of the Causeway batteries; was after the retreat of the enemy’s re- 
serves; was after the overthrow ofthe column long engaged with Lacy Yea’s 
Fusileers ; and was exactly simultaneous with the movement which brought 
our Grenadier Guards into their final engagement with the enemy’s columns. 


XII. 


Note respecting the truth of the accounts which represent that a great and ter- 
rible fight took place near the Telegraph on the day of the Alma. 


In the beginning of the year 1855 the Baron de Bazancourt was sent to ~ 
the theatre of war by the French ‘ Minister of Public Instruction,’ and the 
‘Mission’ with which the Baron went charged was that of writing a history 
of the Crimean expedition. He was accredited to the then French Com- 
mander-in-chief by the Minister of War, and he seems to have been freely 
supplied with all such materials for getting at the truth as could be found in 
the military journals of the French army, and in the statements voluntarily 
made to the historian elect by officers who had themselves directed the oper- 
ations which they undertook to describe.* Closely translated, the Baron’s 
account of the supposed fight at the Telegraph runs thus. After speaking 
of the point where the building of the Telegraph stands, he says :—‘ It is 
‘there that the battle is; it is there that there are the efforts of attack and 
‘defense. On all sides we crown the plateau ; but the considerable Russian 
‘forces massed behind-the Telegraph, the sharp-shooters sheltered in this 
‘partly-built tower, and the batteries placed right. and left, decimate our 
‘troops. Already the Ist Zouave Regiment and the Ist battalion of the 
‘Chasseurs of the Ist Division, and on their left the 2nd Zouaves of the 3rd 
‘Division, shelter themselves behind the undulations of the plateau, and 
‘were keeping up a sustained fire against the Russians, when two batteries 
‘of the reserve, led by Commandant La Boussiniére, came to oppose artillery 
‘to artillery. The battery of Captain Toussaint quitted the road in order 
‘to arrive. more rapidly by a movement toward its left, just in front of the 
‘Telegraph ; the Zouaves themselves help to drag the guns up the last ac- 
‘clivities. They are soon placed, and open their fire, to which the Zouaves 
‘of the two divisions and the foot Chasseurs add a redoubling of fire. Four 
‘Russian guns quickly limber--up and withdraw. But the fire of the enemy’s 
‘masses and that of the artillery placed in the rear of the Telegraph cause us 
‘serious losses... This position of expectancy could not long be maintained ; 
‘an impetuous charge of the Russian cavalry on this point was imminent. 

‘Colonel Cler, who knows the war-tried and resolute troops which he com- 
‘mands, comprehends that he can not save them from utter destruction but 
‘ by one of those sacrifices which snatch victory. For an instant he hesitates 
‘between a charge with the bayonet against the great front of the Russian 


* See his Preface, p. vi. 


[XTII. ‘.  ~XPPENDEX. 699 


‘square, and an attack on the tower of the Telegraph, the centre and cul- 
‘minating point of the enemy’s line. It is upon this last plan that he de- 
‘cides ; and, going forward in advance of the angle formed by the regi- 
‘ments, and putting his horse into a gallop, he cries out, ‘‘To me, my Zou- 
‘aves! ‘To the tower! to the tower !” 

‘ All precipitate themselves at the same time—that is, the 2nd Zouaves, 
‘the Ist Zouaves with Colonel Bourbaki at their head, the foot Chasseurs, 
‘the 39th Regiment, which comes up with Colonel Beuret and General 
‘d’Aurelle. 

‘It is a human torrent which nothing stops. Colonel Cler comes the first 
‘to the tower; all have followed him; ail arrive ardent, impetuous, irresist- 
‘ible. The struggle was short, but it was one of those bloody, terrible strug- 
‘gles in which man fights body to body with his enemy, in which the looks 
‘devour each other [out les regards se dévorent, whatever that may mean], 
‘in which the hands grapple each other, in which arms dashed against arms 
‘are made to yield sparks of fire.* Dead and dying are heaped together, 
‘and the combatants trample upon them and smother them. 

‘ The Russians received this formidable shock on the points of their bay- 
‘onets ; they ask each other if these are indeed but men [si ce sont des hom- 
-*mes] who thus dare to rush upon death; they fight, but soon they stagger, 
‘and these formidable masses, menaced on all sides by the two divisions, 
‘which advance in close columns, become broken, and operate their retreat. 

‘Colonel Cler seized the eagle of his regiment, which he plants on the 
‘tower to the cry of, ‘‘ May the Emperor live!” Sergeant-major Fleury, 
‘of the Ist Zouaves, rushes upon the upper scaffolding of this partly-built 
_ building and balances the flag, which sinks with the intrepid non-com- 
‘missioned officer, struck in the forehead by a ball. The flag of the Ist 
*Zouaves also floats on this glorious trophy, which a fragment of shell 
‘breaks at the staff [flotte aussi sur ce glorieux trophée qu’un éclat d’obus 
‘ brise a la hampe]; Lieutenant Poitevin, ensign-bearer of the 39th, precipi- 
‘tates himself in his turn outside his battalion, and comes in the midst of a 
‘rain of projectiles to plant on the tower of the Telegraph the eagle of his 
‘regiment; a bullet strikes him full in the breast, and stretches him lifeless. 
‘Every one among all these intrepids seemed to have in himself the enthu- 
*siasm of death.’ 

That is the account which M. de Bazancourt gives, and he does not seem 
to have found himself cramped by the officially admitted fact that in the 
whole battle the French only lost three officers killed. One of these, Lieu- 
tenant Poitevin, was struck, as we saw, after the Telegraph was carried, 
and when the Russians were operating their retreat; but in the actual fight, 
terrific and murderous as M. de Bazancourt represents it to have been, it 
does not appear that any French officer was either killed, wounded, or 
hurt. 

It would seem that in 1856 the feeling of the French army respecting the 
story of the supposed fight at the Telegraph was not in such a state as to 
favor any thing like a repetition of M. de Bazancourt’s description, for in 
that year. M. du Casse published his Pregis Historique; and, although he 
describes some portions of the battle at considerable length, he disposes of 
the capture of the Telegraph in terms which do not necessarily denote any 
kind of infantry fight, and in only eight words.t ‘The Telegraph, the key 
“of the position, is carried.’ ‘Le Télégraphe clef de la position est enlevé.’ 

If the accounts given by the French had ended there, it might have been 


*T have observed this phenomenon in fights upon the stage. 
t+ He adds an account of the planting of the flags on the Telegraph; but his narrative of 
the taking of the Telegraph is, as I have said, in eight words. 


700 - APPENDIX. XII] 


inferred that they wished quietly to repudiate the bloody narrative of M. de 
Bazancourt, and to drop the notion of saying that there was really a great 
fight at the Telegraph ; but the official Atlas of the French Government re- 
news the story; for, in the plan which illustrates this period of the battle, 
it places the Taroutine and the ‘ Militia’ battalions close in front of the 
Telegraph and around it; and the letter-press narrative accompanying the 
plans has these words :—‘ Le Général Canrobert lance sa division sur les dé- 
“fenseurs du Télégraphe; apres un combat opiniatre, auquel prend part le 
‘39° de ligne de le brigade d’Aurelle de la 4¢ division, les Russes sont 
*chassés de leur position, et les drapeaux des 1¢t et 2° de Zouaves et du 39° 
“de ligne flottent successivement sur le Télégraphe.’ 

That the three flags were hoisted on the Telegraph no one doubts; but. 
the question is whether those triumphant demonstrations were preceded by 
any thing like a serious fight. The difficulty of believing this is occasioned 
‘by the tenor of the Russian accounts. General Kiriakoff was naturally anx- 
jous to show that he had made an obstinate stand; and it may be imag- 
ined that if the heroic struggle described by M. de Bazancourt had really 
occurred, General Kiriakoff’s narrative would have put it in full relief. He, 
however, says not a word of any such struggle. In one part of his narra- 
tive he speaks of the Taroutine and the ‘ Militia’ battalions as being. so far 
in advance, and so low down, that the batteries near the Telegraph fired over 
their heads; and at a later period of his narrative, without having said a 
word about any intermediate operation, he says that these battalions were 
under a cross-fire of artillery, and that, for that reason, and because the 
troops opposed to the English were already in full retreat, he ‘ commanded 
‘the march toward the main road.’ He does not say a word of the bloody 
struggle with infantry in which the French represent his troops to have 
been engaged. 

At first sight, it does not seem highly probable that upon the very summit 
of a smooth hill-top, where there was nothing to offer cover for the body of 
even one man, a few battalions (already dispirited by the passive endurance 
of artillery fire to which they had been condemned) should be ordered to 
_ make a stand against the 30,000 Frenchmen and Turks who were converg- 
ing upon that very point from the west, as well as from the north; and if 
Kiriakoff had resorted to such a measure, it is all but incredible that his 
careful and almost minute narrative of his operations should have omitted 
all mention of an exploit strange in itself, and, if only it were true, redound- 
ing very much to the glory of his troops. Not only, however, does Kiriakoff 
appear to have been ignorant of any such fight, but the whole tenor of the 
narrative in which he describes what he did is inconsistent with the notion 
that any thing of the kind could have passed. According to his statement, 
he was a divisional general left without orders; he saw his troops suffering 
under a cross-fire of artillery ; he knew (though apparently in an imperfect 

way) that overwhelming masses of French troops were more or less near to 
‘the verge of the plateau; and being thus circumstanced, and seeing, more- 
‘over, that the English had already carried the position, he thought it time to 
‘withdraw his battalions from the line of the artillery fire ; but, from first to 
last, he never was challenged or vexed by the near approach of any French 
‘infantry. Such ishisaccount. Butthis is not all. Both Kiriakoff and the 
‘official French statement of the Atlas de la Guerre d’ Orient agree in rep- 
resenting that, after the check which it had given to Canrobert’s Division, 
the great ‘column of the eight battalions’ had been kept together and moved 
a good way in the rear of the Telegraph, without ever engaging in any kind 
of struggle with infantry. Now, except the troops composing that column, 
the only battalions of Russian infantry which were at any time in this part 


¥ 


C 


XIV:] APPENDIX. 701 
of the field were the Taroutine and the ‘ Militia’ battalions ; and accordingly 
these are the troops which the French official At/as places in array at the 
¥iegraph. Now the ‘ Militia’ battalions, we saw were inferior troops, and 
‘aad dissolved. There remained the Taroutine battalions; and if any stand 
had been really made at the Telegraph, these must have been the troops 
which made it. It happens, however, that an intelligent and highly instruct- 
ed field-officer of that corps has written an apparently complete account of 
every part of the battle of which he was competent to speak ; and if any of 
Kiriakoff’s forces, but still more if any of the Taroutine battalions had made 
_the stand alleged, it is quite incredible either that Major Chodasiewicz, who 
was present with the Taroutine corps, should have remained ignorant of the 
fact, or that, knowing it, he should have omitted to state the truth. If any 
of the Taroutine battalions had been engaged in a fight of this sort, it would 
have been for them the grand, the all-absorbing event of the day ; for it cer- 
tainly was not their fate to be brought into conflict with French infantry in 
any other part of the field, and they would not have failed to remember an 
obstinate and bloody fight of the kind described by the French. But Cho- 
dasiewicz, though he minutely describes the way in which the Taroutine bat- 
talions were galled in their retreat by the fire of artillery, does not say a word 
of any kind of fight at the Telegraph between French and Russian infantry. 
Yet his was the very regiment which, if the French story were true, must have 
borne the brunt of the alleged fight. 

Upon the whole, I have conceived that these authentic and trustworthy 
narratives of General Kiriakoff and Major Chodasiewicz* forbid me to admit 
into my text any statement similar to the account given by M. de Bazan- 
court, or even to that contained in the At/as de la Guerre d’ Orient; but 
those who are so constituted as to wish to incline the ear to a teacher duly 
prepared for them by the French Emperor’s ‘ Minister of Public Instruction,’ 
will find in the above quotation from M. de Bazancourt the sort of guidance 
they like. 


XIV. 


Note containing an Extract from a Letter addressed by Colonel Napier, the 
Historian of the Peninsular War, to Lord Fitzroy Somerset. 


Tf the foregoing volume has begun to disclose to its readers the entireness 
of Lord Raglan’s devotion to the public service, his more than common 
swiftness of action, his subtle understanding of the feelings of other men, 
and his tenderness for their honest pride, it may be interesting to hear, 
that some thirty years before the time I write of, these very qualities had 
been ascribed to Lord Fitzory Somerset by the Historian of the Peninsular 
War. In a letter of October, 1824, which is now before me (but which I 
never saw until long after the publication of this book), Napier wrote :— 


‘My Dear Lorp Firzroy,—The rapidity with which you have fulfilled 
——’s desires would be extraordinary, coming from any other quarter, but 
‘your accurate knowledge of every thing that does or has belonged to the 
‘army enables you to do before others can think. You are well aware, from 
‘the long acquaintance you have had with my opinions, that I am no flat- 
‘terer, and that I am not disposed to express sentiments which I do not 


¢ 


* Anitchkoff was an officer of the staff, whose narrative is based on accounts taken from 
various Russian sources, and he says not a word of any fight at the Telegraph, or of any 
other combat which could have been confounded with it. 


702 * APPENDIX. — [XV. 


‘feel. I would certainly rather have my feelings judged of by my actions 
‘than by my words; but I should be wanting both to you and myself if I 
‘failed to express my admiration of the unabated warmth with which you 
‘ assist real merit, uninfluenced by any consideration but the services of the 
‘individual. Neither has the delicacy with which you have upon several 
‘occasions kept back all appearance of personal protection been unobserved 
‘by myself, or those numerous claimants who have at different times found 
‘a sure friend in you when they could find none elsewhere.’ 

When I see Napier writing that Lord Fitzroy Somerset could do before 
others could think, I am reminded of a singular instance of the uncommon 
swiftness with which his mind worked. One day in the Peninsula, and at 
atime when the Head-quarter’s Staff were moving along the road, there was 
brought an intercepted dispatch, but it was in cipher—in a cipher un- 
known. Lord Fitzroy Somerset took up the paper, and, still riding on with 
the rest of the Staff, began to bend his mind to the letters and signs. Be- 
fore he quitted his saddle he had pierced the secret, had found out the key, 
and had read the dispatch. . 


XV. 
Note respecting the following Plans of the Battle of the Alma. 


The plan of the country, as shown by these Maps, is taken from the French 
official Atlas Historique, but with some slight changes, exaggerating in 
some degree the natural features of the ground, in order to make some of 
the slopes and hollows more easily apparent. The signs purporting to indi- 
cate the positions of the troops have been made by myself ; but it is not in- 
tended that any thing seen in the Plans should be regarded as varying, or in 
any way qualifying, the description contained in the foregoing chapters ; and 
it must not be understood that the positions of the troops are asserted to have 
been at any two moments such as they are represented to be in these two 
Plans. The object of the Plans is not to assert any one of the facts there- 
by appearing to be indicated, but merely to aid the reader in his endeavors 
to follow the statements contained in the text. 


END OF VOL. 1. 


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REFERENCES. 


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=A; the point to which Prince Mentschikoff rode with his 
is -eavalry escort when he was apprized of the turning movement 
- undertaken by the French. 
|. B,C, the ground from which the Prince attempted to oper- 
| ate with the Light battefies which he brought thither. . 
_ Dto E, the direction in which Prince Mentschikoff moved YZ 3 
_ the three “ Minsk” and two of the “ Moscow” battalions. 
G, G, the points to which Kiriakoff, upon being apprized of 
 Bosquet’s turning movement, marched two of his “‘ Moscow” 


H, H, H, H, the higher slopes of the Telegraph Height, to 
which the “ Militia” and the “Taroutine” battalions moved 
__ back before the beginning of the infantry battle. 

K, K, K, the ground on which Kiriakoff, at twenty minutes 
past two o’clock, established his two batteries. 


; EXPLANATIONS. 
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Skirmishers, thus, 9060: 


A whole battalion thrown out as skirmishers, thus, ~-oQoe- 


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Plan meant to show the 
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REFERENCES. 


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a, a. The two “ Moscow” battalions, which had been detach- 


: ed, withdrawn from the ravine to form part of the Great 
Column. 


6, 6. The two remaining “ Moscow” battalions. 
¢, ¢, ¢, c. The four “ Minsk” battalions. 
d, d. Two of the “ Borodino” battalions. 


N.B.—The place occupied by these two formed battalions of 
the Corps is not known with precision, but they were some- 
where near the ‘‘ Causeway batteries.” ‘They were not, I think, 
seen from Lord Raglan’s knoll, but that may have been because 

_the configuration of the ground prevented it. 


_.e,é. The two “ Borodino” battalions which were thrown out 
-as skirmishers. 
J. The battalion of Sappers and Miners. 

g. The 6th (Russian) Rifle battalion. 

The sinuous red line, beginning near the Village of Bour- | 
liouk, and thence extending Eastward, represents the advance 
of the 47th Regiment, and of Pennefather’s Brigade, under Sir 
De Lacy Evans, and of the whole of the Light Division, under 
Sir George Brown. 

h, h, h, h. The “ Militia” battalions galled by Artillery fire, 
and dissolving or giving way. 

k, k, k, k. The “ Taroutine” battalions. 

l. Sir Richard England’s Division was at this time under or- 
ders to “support the Guards,” and some of its regiments were 
from time to time moved separately. It is not intended to 
represent that at the moment in question its six battalions 
were collected in the way indicated by the plan. The Divi- 
sion was “ het in hand” with a view to be able to make it act 
in su at points where supports might be wanted. 


, m. The “ Causeway batteries.” 


ee A Russian ficld battery which commanded the Greatde- 


~ doubt. 

N.B.—The forces described in the plan as ‘‘ Prince Ments- 
chikoff’s Great Reserves” consisted only at this time of the four 
‘¢Volhynia” battalions, and some batteries of Artillery. The 
‘¢ Minsk” battalions were withdrawn from the ‘‘Great Re- 
serves” at the beginning of the battle, 


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Jennie D. Hayner: Library Association, 


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